


Emergency Measures Will Be Taken

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Drugs, Drugs Made Them Do It, Dubious Consent, Everything is Complicated, M/M, Religious Themes, Sex Pollen, Worship, drug-induced attempt at self-harm, no one listens to the Deputy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-20 01:18:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14884886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: Rook somehow loses three days, gets a tattoo, and might have agreed to join a cult. He doesn't have time to worry about that though, something is very wrong with the Bliss, and he has to save the county.





	1. The Last Man

The day does not start off well. Rook is captured during a routine early scouting mission, mostly due to his own stupidity, which is the part that smarts the most. He's close enough to Joseph's island when the Peggies take him down that instead of doing what they normally do, which is dropping him off with a random, crazy sibling, instead he's dumped in a truck and driven all the way to the main compound. Where he's shoved to his knees, so he can't tower over everyone, and then held at gunpoint until someone decides that it's time for quotes from Revelations and a forced baptism or two. 

He doesn't have the pleasure of Joseph Seed's company. Which is one thing he's going to be grateful for. 

But it's not very long before it becomes apparent that something else is going on. Peggies come and go with a tense, nervous air about them, looking to each other like they don't know what's happening. Conversation quickly becomes a lot of confused shouting. For a second, Rook wonders if his friends have attempted some sort of rescue, but that's impossible because it's only been an hour at most since they grabbed him. There's something familiar about one of the arguing voices though, coming closer to where he is as the volume rises. It takes a minute but Rook finally realises that it's Faith, though there's no musical lilt of dreamy echoes to her voice this time. It's tight and impatient, giving orders in a hurry. She sounds worried, or afraid. 

"I think something's wrong with the Bliss."

That's the last thing Rook remembers for a very long time.

~

Rook gradually becomes aware that he's not where he's supposed to be, that he's not where he remembers being.

He's standing barefoot and shirtless on a wooden floor, feeling sluggish and far too heavy, sugary-sweet tang in his mouth. His entire body aches in strange and uncomfortable ways. It's like a jump cut, from the compound to here, and Rook has absolutely no clue what happened inbetween. There's nothing in his memory, nothing at all. Trying to shake something loose is like batting at empty space. He sways unsteadily, rights himself against a wall until it passes. Out of all the discomfort, his back stings particularly obviously, like he scraped against something too hard. He tries to fold an arm back to check, encounters vague soreness wherever he prods. But his fingertips are clean, there's no blood.

Rook checks his watch, which he's thankful to still be wearing. It's now four hours later than when he remembers. Four hours between being on his knees in the mud, listening to angry voices and now.

No.

No, that's not right. The date is wrong. It's not four hours, it's _three days_ and four hours later.

Rook has somehow lost three whole days.

He staggers to a window and looks out. He doesn't recognise much, but there are a lot of Eden's Gate vehicles, flags hanging from every vantage point, barrels leaking green poison onto the ground. He thinks he's still on Joseph's island, deep in Eden's Gate territory, somewhere in a two story building. The air smells like sugared fruit. He can hear someone laughing far below, somewhere in the woods. It's a soft laughter, breathless, and it goes on and on, until Rook starts to worry for whoever's doing it.

There are no guards. There's no one on the perimeter at all.

Rook moves further along, finds doorways, most of them leading to empty rooms, some of them are bedrooms, some storage rooms full of unlabelled crates. Some of the rooms are locked. Rook can hear someone crying behind one of the doors. But they don't answer when he calls out to them.

He's more confused than worried, because he doesn't feel like a prisoner, there's no sign that anyone is keeping him here, this doesn't feel like something he needs to escape from. There's no air of menace to anything, no trail of bloody destruction. It's quiet, and there are barely any signs of life at all. What the hell is going on?

He's exploring a bedroom with wide open windows when he finds his shirt, when he finds a full length mirror - and sees the expanse of his back. He discovers the reason for the vague discomfort and sting. There is an Eden's Gate tattoo on his back. Huge and dark and new, already thickening at the edges. A statement laid on his skin that catches all the breath in his throat in stunned anger

He's going to kill John Seed. Because every time Rook's seen a tattoo gun around here, it's always been with him. He wanted to call him wrathful, Rook will show him wrathful.

A creak of floorboards makes him turn back the way he came in, much too fast, and he wobbles for second, worries that he's going to need guns, and he doesn't know where any of them currently are. Or if he can even shoot straight in this state. But all thoughts of anything else fall somewhere out of his grasp at what he finds in the doorway.

He finds Joseph Seed, one hand splayed on the wooden frame, the other hanging loose at his side. He's alone, nothing behind him but empty corridor. He's frowning, hair mostly free, and there's a bruise just colouring on the left side of his face. He's wearing significantly less than Rook is used to. In fact, everything less. There is _nothing_.

"Oh," Rook says, because he can't think of anything else.

"You were gone," Joseph says simply, as if it's a problem he has corrected accordingly. "There was no one to read to."

What the hell?

Joseph wavers on his feet, and Rook is baffled as to what's happening here, until he leans close enough to see that Joseph's pupils are huge and dark in a ring of blue. He is, to put it simply, _high as fuck_. 

That actually explains a lot. Rook's vast quantity of missing time, the laughing he'd heard outside that sounded almost helpless, the faint crying from one of the upstairs bedrooms, and the fact that something in the air smells like burnt sugar. 

Joseph sways again, disturbingly. Rook steps close and catches his arms, without really thinking about it, and Joseph's skin is air cool under his fingers. Rook steadies him, and Joseph relaxes into his grip like he has absolute faith that Rook won't let him fall. Which is expecting a lot, considering their relationship so far has mostly been a series of tense meetings where the threat of conversion and/or torture was never far away.

"Someone fucked with the Bliss." Rook realises it all at once. Because it's the only explanation that makes sense. It's the only thing around here capable of doing something this. Though he'd always assumed that the Seeds were immune to the plant's powers somehow, that it was a tool they used without having to worry about their own exposure. 

The fact that Rook is much taller and heavier than everyone else might be the only reason he's thinking straight right now, that he's _almost_ thinking straight right now. It's the same reason the Peggie dart guns tend to make him feel a little numb in the legs at best while anyone else just keels right over. Which begs the question, was this an accident, or was it done on purpose? And how many people are affected? Rook remembers well enough how many white flowers there are out there, he's been avoiding them for weeks. Not just them though, there are tanks scattered all over the county, leaking that shit into the air. How regularly are they replaced? This could be - this could be very, very bad, for a lot of people.

"We have been given a gift," Joseph says, he slides shaky hands from Rook's arms to his shoulders, fingers digging. "The Bliss is a gift for us. It opened our eyes to the truths we refused to see. To the truths that we ignored in favour of comfortable lies."

Faith knew something was happening, Rook remembers, she was there when this all started. Rook needs to find Faith, needs her to tell him what's going on, how they used the Bliss before. How they stopped it from affecting them, how to stop it now. 

"We have to find Faith." Rook coaxes Joseph's fingers out of their almost painful claim on his skin . "Joseph, do you know where Faith is?"

Joseph nods serenely. Rook hopes that he understands that this is a quest to find his sister, and not some nebulous metaphorical search for meaning.

"Great, and since there's literally no one else, I guess that means you're coming with me."

"There is work to do," Joseph agrees. "There is always work to do, people to be saved. We are here to show them the way, to make sure the path beneath them is clear."

Rook has to give Joseph credit for managing to sound almost reasonable and commanding. Considering he's still a long expanse of bare skin, every line of ink and every scar out for anyone to see. Rook should probably fix that, because it is distracting in so many ways.

"Yeah, do you think you can put pants on to do it?" he asks. Because that seems like the least Joseph can do after everything he's put Rook through already.

Joseph nods again, and then does nothing else. As if he expects Rook to fetch him pants. Rook sighs and rubs his eyes, because he doesn't think he's clear-headed enough for this.

Rook finds Joseph's pants halfway along the corridor, the waistband is ripped, and the belt is missing. It's an adventure getting him into them. It's an adventure encouraging them to stay up. And Rook has officially spent more time touching Joseph Seed's naked body than anyone else's for the last six months. It's a weird thought. It's a weird thought because there's a muffled, confused part of his brain that tells him he's touched it a lot more than he's aware of. He thinks he's done a lot of things that he's probably better off not remembering in the last three days. 

"Right, wait here, I have to -"

"No," Joseph says. His fingers dig into Rook's wrist, hard enough to hurt. "You must not leave. You are my herald and you must protect me from harm. Your place is beside me. You made a vow." He almost sounds the same. It's Joseph's old tone but it's played over a mess of static and restless movement.

Joseph frowns when Rook cautiously tugs at the hold, as if he's not used to people refusing him.

"I don't remember any of that," Rook tells him. Because he doesn't feel like that's the sort of thing he would have agreed to. But Joseph's grip is demanding, and Rook doesn't really want to risk making this messy when he still has no idea what's going on. When he hasn't seen anyone else. What the hell happened here? What has he been doing for three days? Everything is too fuzzy to catch hold of, like pieces of a dream long gone. He doesn't think Joseph is going to be any help in that regard. But so far he's the only person Rook has found. "Joseph -"

"You chose me to lead you to paradise, over my brother," Joseph adds, and that manages to sound like both a reminder of Rook's responsibilities, and an argument in favour of taking him. 

"I did?" Rook says, and then "Which brother?" He hopes it's not Jacob, who he finds weirdly unnerving. Him and his fucking music box of bad dreams and regrets.

"I have been chosen," Joseph says firmly, instead of answering, measuring the words out carefully. He says it again, then a third time. Then he simply sighs and reaches out, takes Rook's hand in his own, smiles at nothing at all.

Rook's not really a fan of that, they are not hand-holding friends. This is just more proof that everything has gone somewhere insane and wrong in the last few days. But shaking Joseph off at this point seems almost cruel. Rook supposes an argument can be made that if the entirety of Eden's Gate is out of their mind, then he's probably going to want to at least keep an eye on the cult leader. Also, and more disturbingly, there's the fact that Joseph clearly isn't up to being a danger to him or anyone else right now. At the moment he seems content to hold Rook's hand, and go wherever he's led. If anything he's the one who's in danger from anyone that might show up with a grudge. Helpless is a not a word Rook would have ever associated with Joseph Seed but it's very hard to find another one right now.

So, Joseph Seed is apparently his new responsibility. 

"We have to find Faith," Rook tells him again, hopes that he remembers. 

Joseph nods. "I must take the word with me," he adds, when Rook moves to tug him towards the stairs. "I must reach the heart of the people, and lead them to salvation."

It takes Rook a second to work out that Joseph means his book. The book of Joseph. The word that he thinks God dictated to him. Rook scrubs at his hair, finds grass and possibly bark in it, and has no idea why. 

"Ok, sure, your book, where is it?"

Joseph blinks up at him, as if he expected Rook to know. And Rook thinks he actually misses the glasses, because Joseph's eyes are naked and much too close. There's no barrier at all, to their unnerving, unblinking stare. Which is considerably deeper and less settled right now. Rook feels dizzy enough as it is, trying to imagine what it feels like inside Joseph's head might actually sent him mad.

"You don't need the book, Joseph," he tries.

"I must take the words He has given to me," Joseph says again.

Rook has no fucking idea where Joseph's book is. It could be anywhere, it could be next door, it could be miles from here in the woods. But they don't really have time to check. They don't have time to go room to room looking for it.

"Don't you always have the words inside you or something," he says, and hopes like hell that he comes across more convincing than impatient. "How are you supposed to share the book with people if you don't remember all the words without it?"

Joseph looks at him, searching. 

"You are testing me," he says eventually, then nods slowly, accepting. "As we should always be tested."

Rook finds his own boots, though he has to follow Joseph back to his room to get his. Thankfully Joseph puts them on without having to be shown how.

The Bliss has made Joseph's intensity strange and soft, and with his hair mostly down and his glasses missing, he looks more like a struggling artist than a dangerously unstable cult leader. Which might not be helpful if Rook's taking him out among his congregation. None of which Rook wants to get in the way. He doesn't know how many of them are affected by this. The ones that are, are probably going to be unpredictable and uncooperative at best, downright fucking dangerous at worst. He needs Joseph to be as much himself as he can be right now, at least visually.

And, yes, there's something that feels counterproductive about the fact that Rook's trying to work out how to get the old Joseph back. How to make him quietly threatening and inscrutable again. It's probably going to involve touching him though, that's pretty much a given.

Rook coaxes him closer, which at the moment is as easy as just gently pulling him. Then he reaches up and carefully takes the loosened band out of his hair, pushes Joseph's hair back until it's mostly tamed again, and then he puts it back up. Though it takes him an embarrassingly long time to work out how to do the little bendy half-ponytail.

It's not perfect, but it will do for now.

Joseph's watching him, an oddly focused expression on his face. It's a look that has intent behind it. 

"What?" Rook asks.

"I would have you come to worship again," Joseph tells him, in what is in no way a conversational tone.

Rook blinks and for a second he has no idea how to react. Because that does not sound even a little bit like Joseph is referencing religious services. Jesus, did that happen? Rook feels like that's the sort of thing that could have happened. It's a possibility. Rook likes being touched, and Joseph touches people a lot, even without help from mind-altering plants. It's entirely possible - entirely likely, he might as well be honest - that they've been touching each other while they were high.

Rook decides that he will deal with that later. The Bliss going out of control is something of a priority right now, for everyone. 

"Ok, lets find Faith first before we...talk about that." 

It's breezy outside, and there's pollen in the air, fluffy-white and endless, flung in the wind like snow that forgot to land.

"What the _hell_?" Rook staggers to a stop and holds his breath instinctively. Because he's never seen anything like it. There are clouds of it scattering apart and then clumping in the air, moving North with the wind. Rook sways out of the way of a stream of it. Is this what's causing it? Not some kind of sinister poisoning by outside forces, or an Eden's Gate plot gone wrong. Is this whole thing just nature giving everyone the finger? That seems like the worst kind of irony, considering what's been going on in the county for the last few months. But if it's natural, if it's the plants themselves and not some sort of contamination - then it's possible this thing could have spread a lot farther than Eden's Gate.

Rook finds a cult flag draped over a fence, tears it in half and covers his nose and mouth. He draws Joseph in next to him and covers his as well.

"Get in the truck," Rook tells him, and Joseph's immediate and unquestioning obedience is perhaps the most disturbing thing that's happened so far.

"Faith, still resides with the faithful," Joseph says firmly. "She is revealing our plan for them. Showing them the way to Eden's Gate. Where they can be free from sin."

"The church, right, that makes sense. Which way is the church from here?"

Joseph points.

Rook drives.

Pollen is not the only thing Rook sees on the way. There's smoke from much further away than the island, past the river in more than three directions. There's what looks like half a plane in a tree, and Rook can hear screaming until he rolls up the windows just to be safe. This could be significantly worse than everyone at Eden's Gate going mad. This could be the whole county, depending on how far this stuff can go before it lands, how much of it there is on the wind. Shit, he's not a pollen expert. Rook's sort of regretting blowing up that chemist now. He doesn't know anything about plants, or drugs or hallucinogens. The only other person who might have a clue is miles away, through some of the thickest Bliss-infested parts of the county.

\- And there's a woman in the middle of the road.

Rook swears and brings the truck to a messy stop. Breathes everything out when he misses her by six inches. It would be really nice to go one day around here, without nearly driving off the damn road.

"Wait here," Rook tells Joseph, though his obedience was apparently just a one time thing. Because he slides over the seats to follow him without a pause.

The woman, wearing an Eden's Gate symbol on her shirt, doesn't seem that bothered to have narrowly missed being hit by them. She's standing in the middle of a scatter of bodies that dot the roadside, moving unsteadily, in wavering steps, from body to body, leaning down and gently shaking them. Not one of them is reacting to her attention. None of them are going to either, no matter how earnest she is, they've all been dead longer than a day.

Rook gets close enough to lean down, to gently touch her shoulder. She looks up at him, smiles, and pats his chest, then seems to remember whatever it was she was doing.

"He won't get up," the woman explains, confused. She reaches down and shakes one of the bodies again. "I'm looking for my brother. I'm looking for my brother, but I haven't found him. He hasn't found me."

Rook very gently coaxes her to stand, steadies her until she's looking him in the face. Her own face is pale, sweaty and exhausted, eyes wide.

"You should go to the church, you know the way to the church," he tells her. Because it's the closest place he knows there'll be people. "Someone will be there. They'll look after you."

"Will he meet me there?" she asks. There's a sort of strained hope to her. But something behind her eyes looks broken, something there already seems to know that her brother is dead. But she's refusing to listen to it. Or the Bliss is letting her pretend it isn't real.

Rook honestly doesn't know what to say to her. He eventually decides that she's the only person who matters right now.

"If I see him, I'll let him know where you are," Rook promises

Which seems to make her happy, because she leans in and hugs him. She feels oddly frail in his grip, like there's nothing to her. A hungry sort of leanness. Which is something Rook hadn't even thought about. It's been, what three days? Have people been remembering to feed themselves, to sleep?

"Bless you," she says. "May the Father bless you."

Yes. Of course. The Father.

Speaking of Joseph - Rook has officially lost Joseph.

" _Fuck_."

He panics for a second, until he hears the slow wash of the river twenty feet from the road. Rook follows the noise, and finds Joseph all the way down the slope, standing waist deep in the flow, arms stretched out to the side and streaming water, like he's waiting to be picked up by some giant bird.

"Damn it, Joseph."

Rook half strides and half slides down the slope towards him, scattering dirt and rocks into the wash. He pauses at the water's edge, before swearing and wading in after him.

Joseph lifts wet hands towards him, expectant and eager, like he was waiting for him all along.

"Let me baptise you," he says, low in his throat, all edges of need that's too sharp to be natural. No one has ever said those words in that tone of voice before. Rook would guarantee it.

"Joseph what are you doing? We don't have time," Rook says, hand gently pulling where it's looped round Joseph's arm, but he will not be moved, not without Rook throwing him over his shoulder, or physically dragging him through the water. Rook doesn't really want to do either of those things. Joseph is being weirdly cooperative right now, and it's probably the only thing that's going right for him.

"I want you to be clean," Joseph insists, something desperate in his voice now, wet hands suddenly on Rook's face. His eyes are glossy, liquid dark at the centre, skipping between Rook's like he needs him to understand. "I want you to be one of us."

"Joseph, I don't even -" Rook sighs. He feels like this is a battle Joseph is not willing to lose, but he's not getting Rook underwater without his permission. How long does a baptism take anyway, probably not long? Shove someone underwater, say some stuff, pull person out of the water, done. It will be quicker to just let him. It's not like it's going to kill him. Joseph isn't strong enough to keep him underwater against his will. "Ok, ok, fine, tell me what to do."

Joseph smiles up at him, like Rook has given him something amazing.

"Trust me," he says simply, like that's easy and not utterly insane. He gathers Rook in close, wet hands spread on him, seeping water through his shirt.

Rook resigns himself to being wet for the rest of the morning.


	2. Ministering To The Faithful

Driving while soaking wet is not enjoyable. But Rook has no other clothes, and it's hard enough to find even one outfit that fits him. He's probably going to get some sort of horrible rotting disease. Some crotch-based rotting disease and it is entirely Joseph Seed's fault.

Joseph is all soft contentment on the seat beside him, humming quietly like he's just had a religious experience. Which is sort of true, though mostly at Rook's expense, Rook's wet, miserable expense.

"Joseph, how the hell did this start?" Rook asks, because it would be good to know exactly how much Joseph remembers, and how well he can currently follow whatever's happening here. If he can talk in anything but vague religious-flavoured pronouncements. Because if people have spent the last three days out of their minds, what does that say about when they're going to come down? Rook's clearly thinking somewhat straight again. Which suggests this thing, this possibly Bliss-related thing, is not permanent. God, let this thing not be permanent.

"I put myself inside you," Joseph says softly, and Rook has no idea whether he means that in a religious way, or in a sex way. Literally none. It's fifty-fifty at this point.

"That's not really helpful," Rook tells him. Then wonders whether he wants to push for more information. He doesn't really have a choice. "Could you be a little more specific."

Joseph seems to consider it for a brief moment, he takes a deep breath and reaches out with a hand, fingertips slowly spreading in front of him.

"You called me Father, and reached for me, and I joined us. You were my vessel, and I put my faith inside you. You became one of us." Joseph stops talking and turns to him, smiles serenely like he isn't full of hallucinogens and madness.

Definitely a sex way then, and that's proof, if Rook even needed any more, that this stronger Bliss will happily make you do things you would never do while not under the influence. Sleeping with Joseph may not even be the worst thing he's done. He can't say he's looking forward to filling in some of the gaps. Rook had always thought he was a man who could make peace with his own mistakes. Because, though he always tries to make the right decision with the information he has, he knows that people fuck up. Of course, he'd always thought all his mistakes would be made while he was aware of it, and not under the influence of hallucinogenic flowers.

"Take your boots off, your feet will rot," Rook grumbles. Because he was always taught to solve one problem at a time, easiest first, and it's hard to change the habit of a lifetime.

There are several thumps next to him, and an awkward shifting against the door.

"Pants stay on," Rook reminds him. "Pants are important."

Joseph shoots him an irritated look, as if he's offended by the insinuation that he'd have to be reminded to keep his pants on.

"I am not the one who removed them last," he argues. "When you came for worship, when you spread yourself beneath me."

Rook slows down, not entirely on purpose. It's more the startled absence of feet for a second. He doesn't crash, he's not a fucking _amateur_.

"You listened to my sermon," Joseph adds, soft like he remembers that very well. "You let me leave its words upon your skin, and then - "

"Ok, I think that's enough catching me up," Rook tells him. Because he doesn't want to think about it right now. He's going to drive them to wherever the hell Faith is, and he will try his very best to not think about it. 

 

~

 

They have to stop four more times for confused people on the road, or at the side of the road, or running into the road with excessive and reckless amusement. 

They're not all Eden's Gate members, there are also people wearing ordinary clothes, carrying backpacks, lacking an excessive quantity of crazy hair and religious conviction. Rook honestly doesn't know whether that means they were prisoners, or that they were on the island by accident, or whether this really does mean that this is happening across the entire county, and everyone is wandering helplessly around in the woods, with no regard for their own safety. Since Rook's the only sane man around, and still a Deputy, this seems like something he should be responsible for trying to fix. 

Fuck. 

If he's really on his own, it might be a struggle just trying to make sure it doesn't get any worse.

Rook sends everyone to the church, because it's the closest place everyone can get to without getting lost, or eaten by wild animals, or run over, or all three. He hopes to God they can sort civilians from Peggies when this is all over. That Eden's Gate will let them sort civilians from Peggies. But, one problem at a time.

People seem far more inclined to listen to him once they spot Joseph - and weirdly that includes the non-believers too. Of course, Joseph has to get out of the car and touch absolutely everybody, like he has to bless them all personally or something. No matter how many times Rook tells him not to. Rook ends up resigned to making him stop once it's gone on long enough to become uncomfortable. 

Joseph has found a notebook in the truck, and a pen, and is now rewriting his book, with a focused sort of care that the debris-strewn road is not being kind to. Also Rook looks over to check on him occasionally and he's fairly sure that an entire page is just the words 'forgive me,' roughly a hundred times.

Joseph tells Rook that this copy is for him, so he can remember the words.

 

~

 

_"The Bliss is a gift," Joseph tells him. "To show people the way, to lead them towards forgiveness."_

_Rook isn't sure if it's a gift that he wants, because he feels warm and too heavy. Everything is sluggish, drifting in and out. He knows it's rude to refuse a gift, to give it back. It upsets people and Rook hates to upset people, he never knows how to comfort them. Even though he hasn't been clumsy for years. There's something important he has to remember, something to do with Joseph. Which doesn't help, because everything about Joseph feels important but in a confusingly big way, not necessarily in a good way. There's just...a lot of it._

_The church is full of people, and there's a lot of noise, talking, crying, laughing. All the noise melts together into something full. There are people laying in the aisles, pews, other church parts he doesn't know the words for. Trying to wade through them to get to Joseph was difficult. Rook has a lot of feet._

_"Be forgiven," Joseph says, and he beckons Rook closer, up the steps and into his space. "Be one of us."_

_Rook blinks at him. Because he's not quite sure how to do that. Or if he's even allowed, he's never been to the front of a church before._

_"How do I -?"_

_"Call him Father," Faith encourages, from behind him, she stretches up on her toes and slips her hands over Rook's eyes, and then away again, once, twice, three, four times. Until the world feels like stop motion. Every stretch of Joseph's body cut into one image, like a painting, like a story in paintings. Rook likes it._

_"Father," Rook says obediently, and it feels strange and reckless on his tongue. But it draws a noise out of Joseph, something pleased and deep, makes him reach out and press a hand against Rook's face. It's warm, and Rook's skin flares pleasantly where they touch, scattering his thoughts apart. Joseph catches Rook's neck, draws him in, draws him down, draws him all the way to him._

_Faith is pulled with him, where she's still holding Rook's waist with her delicate fingers, laughing, bright and breathless. She's happy for him. She's so happy for him._

_"Touch him," she tells him._

_That seems easy enough._

_Rook leans forward, circles Joseph's waist with large hands. Joseph accepts him, that's what he does. He accepts Rook, even after all the things he's done, all the things that made people angry. Joseph forgives him. Promises and welcomes him in so many words, the soft, breathy lilt of it that Rook wants to follow, but he can't. Because kissing him makes the words stop, and they taste of nothing but the inside of Joseph's mouth. So Rook takes his mouth elsewhere, to the ink at his chest, to the strange, curving edges of scars, follow, follow, follow - Faith follows with him, laughing at his back when he kneels, falls, maybe both? She falls with him, laughing mouth pressed into the middle of his spine before she rights herself and curls over his shoulder._

_Joseph's pants are in the way, but Rook's fingers are sluggish, and it takes a while to fix that. Joseph doesn't help him, he just lays hands on Rook's shoulders and says his name, tells him he forgives him, tells him he's going to stay with them, and be one of his children. Someone faraway is crying like they've seen God._

_"Worship him," Faith whispers. Her voice is buttery soft now, fingers threading through Rook's hair, pushing his head down._

_Oh, yes, this is something Rook can do._

 

~

 

Rook rubs at the sides of his head, because he's fairly sure the misty blankness in his memory is starting to ease a little bit, and what it's telling him so far does not fill him with enthusiasm for the rest of it. If he's spent the last three days doing nothing but having weird religious-themed sex with Joseph Seed then he's not going to be happy.

The compound near the church is an unholy mess. The ground is torn up and covered in trash, and there's liquid bliss leaking everywhere in ugly, green streams. Some of the buildings are quietly smouldering and one of them is still burning a little. There are more than thirty people in various stages of dazed and confused. Rook's pretty sure half of them are injured, and at least two of them are probably dead.

One of them, Rook corrects, when the hairy shape he turns out of a puddle of Bliss gives a great gasping shudder and blinks up at him.

"Joseph," he calls back the way they'd come. "I think I'm going to need you."

Famous last words.

Rook has always been good at making crowds part in front of him, he thinks that's part of the reason he's a deputy now. People tend to just point Rook at problems and hope they get solved. Joseph has the same power, but he does it with presence, with purpose, with the certainty that people will move out of his way. The combination of Joseph and Rook, leaves people falling over each other to get out of the way.

It's the first time Rook remembers going through the church doors since all of this started. The first time, in the dark, he'd found the cold raving of a madman, and the simmering threat of violence. When Joseph had lifted his arms to him and called him a horseman of the apocalypse.

This time is a little different.

"Well, fuck me," Rook says quietly.

There is definitely some ministering to the faithful going on.

Rook counts eleven naked people, and he can only work out how and where half of them are joined. This is the greatest number of beards and genitals he's ever seen together in one place. Rook would be one of the first to suggest that the members of Eden's Gate might have had a lot of issues to work through. But the dubiously enforced celibacy rule has clearly not been helping. Rook looks at Joseph, who, surprisingly, doesn't seem that bothered to find half his congregation fucking in church. Rook thinks there's probably a rule against that, no matter how permissive your church is.

"I'm pretty sure this is a whole other sort of cult," Rook mutters to himself. He's never in his entire life tried to break up an orgy. He's not sure exactly how you go about it. He doesn't want to just start pulling people apart. They didn't cover this in training, and he'd never imagined he would have been annoyed about that oversight.

Joseph solves the problem before him, by simply striding to the front of the church and lifting his arms.

"My children," he says simply. 

Rook's genuinely surprised how well that works, how easily that gets almost everyone's attention. They way they gently start to part, and then not so gently once they realise who's returned to the church. They stand, or kneel, on wobbly legs, arms stretched back towards Joseph. Calling for the Father. Rook knew he brought him along for a reason.

A familiar figure rises from the ring of naked skin, all pale hair and wide smile, and not a single stitch of clothing on her.

"The Father has returned to us," Faith says, musical and adoring. 

"Faith." Joseph smiles and beckons her.

She climbs her way laughing out of the splash of limbs. Rook follows, trying not to tread on anybody's...not to tread on anybody. Joseph pulls Faith in like her nudity isn't even a thing, leaning down and gently pressing their foreheads together. Faith tries to hug him from a foot away, then laughs and simply hums joy into the pressure.

Rook doesn't think she's going to be very helpful. If anything she looks further gone than Joseph is.

"We have found our sister in the heart of our faith," Joseph declares, lifting her hand to the congregation. "And I am gratified that you have loved her in my absence."

Rook misses a lot of what comes after that, because he's currently trying to stop a small collection of bearded and straggly Peggies from trying to take his clothes off. They seem enthusiastic enough about the idea that his general Rook-ness is not dissuading them. 

Joseph is helping Faith into her dress now, pulling it down her arms, and then combing her hair out with his fingers like he wants her to look her best. Underwear seems to be optional.

Rook goes to stand outside the church and wait for them, which makes him apparently ineligible for an invitation to the orgy, thank God. Though he supposes this is a hundred times better than a reaping, the reaping is apparently on hold for a while. He watches people stumble between the fences. He watches a woman wearing far too many shirts roll around in a small fragmented cloud of Bliss. He watches a Peggie trying to drink upside down from a faucet, and it's mostly going in his eyes, but he refuses to learn anything from that.

Which reminds Rook, in a roundabout way, that he's absolutely starving.

"Joseph." Rook reaches out for Joseph when he appears beside him trailing one sister, and a crowd of nudity and adoration. He gently turns him around. "Joseph, when was the last time you ate something?"

Joseph frowns at him.

"God will provide for us," he says eventually, with a serene sort of acceptance. "If we have faith." As if it's too long ago to remember.

That's what Rook was afraid of. 

"We need to feed these people," he realises. 

He finds a crate of basic supplies in one of the buildings, half-unpacked like someone was in the middle of shipping it somewhere. It's mostly dried fruits, MRE's and some unpleasant looking cereal bars that Rook suspects will last for seven hundred years and promise something like 'an authentic food-like taste.' 

He shoves two in his pocket and passes one to Joseph.

"Eat that," Rook says simply. "You can't minister to the faithful on an empty stomach."

Joseph apparently sees no good reason not to do what he's told this time. Either that or he's hungrier than he wants to admit to. It's the most mundane thing Rook has ever seen him do, and for some reason that makes it weirdly interesting.

"I want to feed him too," Faith says, hands reaching, voice excited all at once. "Let me feed him!"

Rook gives her one of her own, and hopes that it distracts her, it's not his problem if she gives it to Joseph. Then Rook goes to the doorway and finds a Peggie who can still walk upright and focus a foot in front of him, drags him inside and sets him behind the crate. Where he wobbles but stays where he's put, doesn't try to wander off. Which at the moment is good enough.

"You, scruffy man, give everybody one of these." Rook holds up a packet out of the crate, gently taps it on the man's chest. "Do you understand?"

The man looks confused, stroking the package like it hold secrets. Rook makes him stop doing it, makes him look up at him.

"Give everybody one, and tell them to eat it." 

Joseph leans in next to Rook, catches the man's damp, bearded face in his hands. And every bit of the man's attention and adoration is now fixed on Joseph.

"Daniel, you will do as you are bid."

"Yes, Father," Daniel says obediently. He leans into the crate and starts carefully handing out exactly one to every person that Rook bodily puts in front of him. Eventually everyone seems to get the hint, and they line up, like it's some sort of game. The people too far gone to find their way to the line Rook ushers into a small side room and seats against the wall. Then Rook finds a woman who looks slightly more present than everyone else and guides her over.

"You...I don't know your name -"

"Julia," Joseph provides from somewhere to the left of him.

"Julia, thank you, could you please make sure these people are comfortable, and that they eat and drink something."

Julia gives a shaky nod, then starts awkwardly helping some of them that are still having trouble being upright. And then helping the ones who are already upright to be _more_ upright. He can't fault her for her efficiency he supposes. Rook finds someone else, makes them get a jug and fill water from one of the faucets. He hopes it's drinkable, because there doesn't seem to be another source that isn't the river - he hopes people haven't been drinking out of the river. He saw a documentary once about waterborne parasitic diseases, and it stuck with him in a way he's never been entirely happy about. 

He doesn't even notice Joseph has tucked in beside him, until people start smiling, and waving, and occasionally crying in his direction. But Rook slowly realises that everything is sort of working now, as well as it can when almost everyone is out of their mind, and probably hallucinating something. For whatever good it will do. For however long everyone listens. Food and drink is the most he can do right now. There are just too many people, and only one of him. He can't even tell if people are shaking off the effects, because everyone seems to be reacting a little differently, and he's only been thinking clearly himself for a few hours.

Is this something people can shake off? Or does he need to burn every Bliss field in the county? He has no information, he has nothing to go on except what he can see with his own eyes. And he can't help but wonder if the town has fared any better. He needs to check. He needs to check on his friends.

"We have to go to Fall's End, we have to check on the town."

Joseph and Faith both insist on going with him, which Rook accepts because he doesn't feel like he can leave them here, when they're in no real state to help anyone. If anything half the Peggies will get distracted worshipping Joseph and there'll either be another orgy or everyone will starve to death. Rook, will effectively be guilty of abandonment. As he's now responsible for them in some way, both of them. Which is a thought he's not really happy about, but he supposes he brought it on himself. Faith skips among the trucks parked haphazardly round the compound, until she finds the perfect one to her liking. Which she shows by climbing into it and waiting for them.

Rook shoves the seat all the way back so he can get his legs in. Faith scoots out of his way, and then immediately gets back in his way once he sits down.

"Faith, what the hell happened to the Bliss, why is it - pollinating, I guess?"

She smiles at him, like he's said something dirty.

"It wasn't supposed to," she says, voice dreamy. "It wasn't supposed to, not the right strain, supposed to be insects, flying one, real ones, not ones from inside the Bliss."

Faith leans sideways, curls over Rook's arm and laughs into his ear.

"The Bliss fell in love," she says, soft, like it's a secret. " _Everyone_ fell in love."

So, no, Faith is probably not going to be any help. But it seems safe to assume now that it is the pollen that's responsible. Which explains why no one is coming down, they're all getting dosed over and over again. It also explains why some people are worse than others, why moments of clarity come and go, because the doses are never the same twice. Rook still doesn't know why he's pulled himself out from under it. Maybe the pollen count isn't high enough any more to drag him under?

"We must go out into the world and minister to our faithful," Joseph says, oddly impatient, like part of him actually gets that the county has turned into a Bliss-fueled nightmare and he should probably be doing something about that. Like he's the best person to do something about that. Rook just wishes that enthusiasm came with more concrete suggestions and helpful advice, and less biblical nonsense and unnecessary reminders of their sexual history.

"Your faithful," Rook grumbles. "Not mine."

"And yet you have gathered our wayward flock, and shepherded them home." Joseph gestures awkwardly from his cramped position beside them both.

"Shepherded them home," Faith says softly and laughs between them. She's torn between trying to hold both their hands and trying to make them hold hands, which is making driving difficult. The truck is not big enough to take three people abreast, especially not when one of them is Rook. Which is why Faith is half in Joseph's lap and half tucked under Rook's arm. 

"It doesn't count. I'm just trying to get people off the road - Faith, please I need that hand."

Faith does not give him his hand back.

"You're one of us now," Faith tells him. "Tell him Joseph."

"He knows," Joseph says simply. "He has felt our love. He has come to worship. He is reluctant through fear of rejection, and we must show him that we forgive him, that there is a place for him with us. We must help him see."

"I really wish someone would help me," Rook complains. He wishes that someone would tell him what to do, where to go. Because the only people trying to help him right now are his enemies, and they're both mostly out of their own heads. "I feel like the last sane man in the word right now - Faith, one or the other please, I can't hold onto you both. No, no, I still have to hold the wheel."

"You only have to ask, if you need us." Faith says, she's settled for looping her hand around Rook's elbow, occasionally 'helping' him with the wheel. "We are family after all."

"I don't think we're family, Faith." Because Rook doesn't really have any of his own left, and though he might have wondered what a big family would be like. He certainly wouldn't have picked the Seeds as an example.

"Joseph has deemed it so. You cannot contradict him."

"You are sworn to me. Your burdens are mine," Joseph agrees, in a tone which tells Rook it will do him no good arguing to the contrary.

Rook eyes him sideways. He's not sure Joseph gets to look that mysterious any more. Not since Rook had to help him get his own pants on.


	3. Wayward Son

The first thing that happens when they get to Fall's End is a dishevelled man runs in front of the truck, and Rook has to hit the brakes hard enough that they all fucking _bounce_. It's actually a good thing that Faith was holding onto both of them. Though judging by the amused peal of laughter, she's fine.

"It's the end of the world," the dishevelled man tells them, in a wavering tone, and then flees sobbing into the woods.

It seems like not everyone is having a good trip.

The town is trashed, there's garbage in the street, broken windows, and some wandering townsfolk are still in the middle of property damage, whether they intend it or not. At least half the cars are sitting crashed into each other, some of them still blaring unpleasantly. There is even a truck stuck half in the wall of a house. It seems that everyone who has a vehicle has been breaking the driving while under the influence rule. Judging from the damage to every one of them, it's just not sinking in that this is a bad idea. Rook leaves the truck somewhere they can hopefully retrieve it later, and starts down the main street.

No one shoots at them, which somehow makes the whole thing stranger. Since Rook has spent the last month or so expecting to be shot at wherever he goes, especially when he feels tense and on edge like this. He'd honestly thought someone might at least try and take a shot at Joseph, it's not like the entire town hasn't been gunning for him for years. But apparently the people of Fall's End have more important things to worry about than the cult leader in their midst. What those things are, and whether or not they actually exist right now, Rook doesn't have a clue.

He recognises a few people stumbling around, a few others sat confused or keeled over against the doors of houses and stores. 

The guy from the gun shop seems to have barricaded himself inside, with a combination of crates and magazines. Rook decides it's probably not worth trying to get in there and acquire himself a new gun. But he hopes the guy has some food and water at least, since he always seemed friendly enough, if a little weird (though honestly that could describe a lot of people around here.)

Some people have made the decision to get up to the roof. They're much easier to spot. Though some people are crying in the dirt like the journey didn't end well for them. Rook doesn't like leaving them there, but he's not sure his basic first aid skills are going to be much help, once he starts cataloguing injuries. And he can't help but wonder on top of that how many people are going to actually need medical attention, once they start coming down. How many people it's already too late to help.

He's compelled to look through a few of the windows as they pass, some of them just shattered holes. Or into a few cracked doorways. He doesn't see much, they're either empty, or the people inside don't want to be seen. Though he does occasionally hear whispering, or conversations from inside, some louder than others. Some offered accusingly through doorways when Rook knocks.

_"They all have insect faces. They all have insect faces, crawling around, chittering their secrets..."_

Rook gives that house a wide berth. Because that's just an unsettling reminder that for all the people having an amazing and possibly sex-themed adventure in their own head, there could be an equal number that are living out a nightmare.

He makes a noise of relief when he spots someone he actually knows, on a roof up the street.

"Grace," Rook shouts.

Grace looks down from the roof she's on, and it takes her no time at all to spot him. She waves her sniper rifle and beckons him closer, weaving to the edge in a way that worries Rook enough to make him pick up his pace and get underneath her.

"You got them then," she says, eyeing his company. "Good, good for you. Make sure you don't let them get away this time."

"I won't," Rook assures her, because what else is he going to say? He eyes the rifle she now has tipped against her shoulder, considers her position high above everyone else. "Er, Grace, what are you shooting at?"

"The things in the trees," Grace tells him, pointing West where the trees are sparse and a good distance away. "Don't worry, I haven't let them take a single soul. They can't come down to the ground if you keep your eyes on them. Someone has to watch out for this town, with all this chaos going on."

Rook has a moment to wonder if you can be hallucinating your balls off and still be perfectly lucid and coherent at the same time. It seems like a dangerous combination. Though she has a cooler up there, and she's fairly calm now. Grace probably knows the difference between the hallucination things she needs to shoot, and non-hallucinatory people. And if anyone can deadeye an imaginary monster while high, then it's Grace. It's probably best if she just stays up there.

"Oh, ok, good job. Keep it up then. Just call down if you want a snack or anything."

"Will do, Deputy."

Still, part of him still feels bad about leaving her. Though he hasn't known them very long, these people are his friends. He's been through some insane and dangerous shit with them, things he couldn't have even imagined when he first started at the Sheriff's office. But this, Rook can't save anyone from this. He can't scout this out, or get in front of it and take a bullet. He just hopes Nick knows well enough not to try flying, and Sharky doesn't set himself on fire. Shit, the man does that even when he isn't high.

Any other situation people would probably gather at the church, but this isn't exactly a situation where people are looking for comfort or direction. Still, Rook doesn't have a better idea right now, so he gathers up the two Seeds he's currently in charge of, and pushes them in that direction.

He's gone through three church doors in the last few months, and it's getting harder and harder to predict what he's going to find inside. Because each time has been more surprising than the last, for a variety of different reasons. He keeps thinking things can't get worse. But he's learned by now that just encourages the world to try. 

This time there's only one half naked person. And thankfully it's the right naked half, Rook wishes that made him feel better. 

"Ok, I've officially reached my half naked preacher quota for the year," he decides.

Pastor Jerome catches sight of Joseph and waves the bible he's holding at him. Rook kind of hopes there isn't a gun in this one. He really doesn't want to have to knock him out.

He weaves in their direction, arms outstretched as if he means to gather them all up for services. Rook would like to avoid that if at all possible.

"Ah, I see you have brought the devil to our garden. Do you wish to change your ways, devil?" Pastor Jerome catches Joseph's arms and Rook wonders whether he should make that stop somehow. "I accept the challenge of teaching you all the ways you have become lost, of bringing you finally to the light."

Joseph looks so beautifully offended that Rook has to laugh. Which gets him a sharply betrayed look, before Joseph is forced to try and stop Jerome from aggressively blessing him. Rook hadn't even known you could bless someone aggressively, it's kind of fascinating to watch.

Faith seats herself neatly in a pew, like any church is church enough for her. There are a few citizens that have come to watch whatever Jerome has been doing. Or maybe they're just there out of habit. Faith picks up the hand of the woman next to her, smiles like she's made a new friend, and starts humming quietly. The woman sways gently to the music.

"You can still be saved, everyone can be saved." Pastor Jerome is now attempting to embrace Joseph, who seems not to know whether he wants to be embraced or not. He finally appears to settle for not, and tries to get one of his arms out. While Jerome just tries from a different angle, like it's his new mission in life. All enthusiasm and strangely determined affection. "You gave the people false hope, because you have none of your own, wallowing in darkness and despair. But God does not abandon those who seek his light. Those who have faith."

"I have already been saved," Joseph tells him.

Jerome just pats him gently.

This whole scene is hilariously, darkly ironic in a way Rook is kind of sad that he doesn't get to share with anyone. 

Once he makes sure that no one has a weapon, and no one's going to get their eyes gouged out, he leaves them to their wildly conflicting interpretations of religion, so he can gas up the truck and grab something more substantial than bunker snacks.

When he comes back they seem to have made some sort of progress. No one's bleeding and Joseph is allowing himself to be hugged with an air of someone who had tried every other option. The super-Bliss seems to have filed down Joseph's violent edges, which is perhaps the one good thing to come out of this. Rook doesn't really feel up to dealing with a version of Joseph that still has the urge to see heretics and sinners put to the knife, to jam the eyes out of a man's head. This version of him is much less threatening. Even if he does keep trying to have sex with him. 

John is another question though, a violently unstable problem still roaming around unsupervised. Or possibly dead?

"Faith?" 

Faith looks up from her seat.

"Hmm?"

"Where's John?"

She blinks at him, then shakes her head helplessly.

Where the hell would John Seed be? The ranch maybe? Or maybe he's in the bunker. There's a good chance that anyone who shut themselves in and stayed in one of the bunkers will still be unaffected by this. Which might be another problem he has to deal with later, depending on who that person in. Though he does have Joseph, he is effectively holding the king, should it become necessary.

Rook backs up the street a little way. Until he can see the roof again.

"Hey, Grace?"

She waves down at him again, to show she's still there.

"What do you need, Deputy?"

"Have you seen John Seed?"

"He's in the bar," Grace says helpfully.

Rook blinks up at her. In the bar? John Seed is in the bar, right here in town, mingling with the townsfolk? How the hell did that happen? More importantly, is everyone still in one piece? 

He waves a thank you and heads back the way he'd come. 

Joseph and Faith are both waiting outside the church for him. Rook doesn't know how Joseph managed to shake Pastor Jerome, he's not going to ask, it's probably for the best.

"So, I think I've found John," Rook says. "Apparently he's in the bar."

Joseph's face does something tense and complicated, but then he's the one leading them, and Rook is the one following, Faith trailing behind like she can't walk without twirling. And Rook really needs to find her some underwear if she's going to keep doing that.

The bar is darker than outside, and confusingly full, but that's not a problem for two reason. The first being that Rook can see over everyone else, and the second being that standing on the bar of the Spread Eagle, and missing half of his clothing, is John Seed himself.

And Rook is reminded, suddenly and unexpectedly, of exactly when he'd gotten the tattoo.

 

_Rook's back still feels sort of warm and floaty, nice. He can still feel the purr of vibration, even though John has stopped, the purr continues._

_"This is so good, yes, this is perfect, this is forever," John tells him. "This means you have to stay, you have to **stay**. You have to stay with us now. Even if you leave you have to come back."_

_John is still straddling his ass, leant over, one hand flattened on the middle of Rook's back. The other is petting where Rook is floaty, and maybe a little sore._

_"Can I take your pants off?" John asks, in a different tone of voice altogether. This one sort of vibrates too._

_Rook thinks about it for a minute._

_"You can," he decides eventually, because having John sitting on him, body shifting back and forth, had felt very nice, and he sort of wants more of it. In all the **more** sort of ways._

_So John does, though it takes him a while._

_"Just let me," John eventually says, breathless and shaken against his shoulder. "Just let me." He makes a wet, confusing noise for a minute, and then Rook's thighs are nudged apart, before there are fingers inside him, the slippery, greedy push of them. But Rook's so relaxed that it's fine, it's fine, it's good. It stays good for a while, he just forgets how to say so._

_John is biting words into his shoulder, broken bits and pieces, all shivery desperation. There's the sound of a belt, a zipper, the hush of clothing shoved out of the way._

_Rook murmurs approval. There should be words, he should say some words._

_"Yes, do that, that's fine." There, that's good enough._

_"Why are you so fucking tall?" John says, but then the head of his cock is slide-pushing in. It kind of stings, like his back, only more, but John makes a noise like Rook has pulled everything out of him. Which makes it not matter so much._

_John encourages Rook's thigh to stretch out and up, pushes in as deep as he can get._

_Fuck, that's awkward good, maybe? It's a tight drag of discomfort that isn't really bad, interesting and different. Rook sort of wants to get his knees under him, wants to push back onto it._

_"No, don't try and get up, fuck -" John laughs. "You're too high, I can't -"_

_Everything stops for a minute, John laughs again and tries to encourage Rook back down with his own weight. Which is amusing, because he doesn't weigh a lot._

_"Please." John bites his shoulder, beard scraping interestingly down his back. "Fuck, please."_

_That's very polite, nicely soft, all dragged out of John's throat. Rook grumbles but sinks back into the floor._

_John's hands spread him open, and then he's all the way inside again. He makes a noise in his throat like Rook has given him something he wasn't expecting._

_"I'm going to leave all my sins inside you," John whispers, like it's a secret he's afraid to share, something he's ashamed of. "Because you're strong enough to hold them."_

_John touches him as well, and Rook can't think about anything, can't make any more words._

_Afterwards, John moans into his skin for a long time, before sliding free, pulling himself up, dragging wet lines up the curve of Rook's ass to the small of his back._

_"You're one of us now," John whispers breathlessly against his ear, hands curling at Rook's long waist. "You have to stay, you're going to stay. Joseph will make you stay."_

_"I have a tattoo," Rook offers, because that seems important._

 

Damn it. The last three days has apparently just been a constant stream of terrible decisions, hasn't it?

Mary May is very disappointed when she sees them, and realises they're going to be removing her bar ornament. When she's still trying to push a combination of money and candy bar wrappers down his pants. Rook isn't sure he wants to ask what exactly has been going on here. He should probably just be grateful that he didn't walk into another orgy.

"No, no, don't take him. He's the only one who knows all the words," she protests. "And I haven't had my turn yet."

They win the battle, mostly because John sees them, and promptly falls on them in his eagerness to be reunited. Rook is forced to catch him, a smack of solid limbs, and elbows, and laughter. He smells like he's been drinking for a while. As if one mind-altering substance wasn't enough for him. A scatter of bottles and a dish of something crunchy hit the floor a moment later. Mary May just lays on the bar and makes sad noises.

At least the people in town seem to have been remembering to eat and drink. Though Rook doubts their digestive systems are going to thank them for trying to live on candy, chips and beer for three days.

John Seed turns the awkward moment they're having into a hug, while his feet find their way to the floor. Though it's a hug that you'd give an old friend, or a lover, or a brother returned home from travelling overseas. It's not the sort of hug you should give to the man that you threatened to torture, menaced from across the valley, stabbed in the arm with a screwdriver while they were tied up, and then aggressively tattooed while drugged out of your mind.

Only then there are warm hands on his face, and kissing now, clumsy and very drunk. While Rook is busy frowning helplessly and trying to decide whether he's even allowed to make this stop happening, when John is dishevelled and barely stable, smiling like a kid who's just gotten all the presents he asked for. It doesn't help that Rook knows they've already had sex, sex his body remembers favourably enough to apparently overrule his objections to pull away, and Rook doesn't even know how to feel about that. Because he was on drugs, and it doesn't count. Even though he remembers it now, remembers the shivery pressure of it in an unfair amount of detail. None of it counted.

He's going to have to burn all of the Bliss fields, _all of them_.

"You came for me," John sounds surprised, and so very pleased, as if he's been constantly disappointed in that regard. Rook can see now that there's a messy tear over his eyebrow, blood not long dried, and several long scrapes on his arms. That's probably not the first time he'd fallen off the bar. "I couldn't remember the way back. But the people were so nice. They let me sing, they gave me beer, they took some of my clothes. I forgave a lot of them, which they were very happy about, they forgave me. I stabbed someone in the face, but it was fine because they weren't actually real - probably not real." John smiles widely, and Rook's pretty sure that last piece of information was just for him. As if John doesn't want to upset him. 

John moves from Rook to Faith, who laughs and lets John spin her around. There's a hug, and a kiss that's far too friendly for people who are at least nominally pretending to be related.

Then John spots Joseph, and there's no reining in any of his enthusiasm. Joseph gets squashed just as enthusiastically. Which Rook finds amusing to watch because John is too excited to even care. But Joseph doesn't seem to mind yet more bruising to the memory of his previous very serious exterior. He smiles and catches the back of his brother's head, pulls him down into a position that's clearly familiar, one John relaxes into.

"Thank you for coming back," he says quietly. 

"You're coming with us, John," Faith tells him. "We're ministering to the faithful, leading them home in this time of crisis."

Rook should have expected this, really. But he's not sure how he feels about being responsible for three quarters of the entire Seed family. 

"Yes, we should do that! Where's my jacket, has anyone seen my jacket?" John grabs a passerby. "It has planes on it. I think I might have left it somewhere. We can't leave without it!"

What is it about the Seed's and their random accessories?

This one isn't as difficult as Joseph's book. Rook finds a drunk Peggie wearing John's jacket in the kitchen, and levers it off of his half-slumbering form. John is thrilled to be reunited, and apparently the shirt and vest just aren't important, because John throws the coat on, and is more than happy to leave.

John wants to hold everyone's hand, and this is becoming a pattern. Why do they all immediately assume that Rook is a hand-holding sort of friend? Were these people never hugged as children or something?

Right. No. Of course not.

Rook reluctantly lets John hold one hand and Faith the other, while Joseph strides ahead, arms outstretched, as if he's confident in his position as head of their crazy family. Though Rook would guarantee he has no idea where they're going. Or maybe he thinks Rook's going to let him drive. Which even on a good day he would have voted against. The keys are still in his pocket though, so it's probably fine.

Something occurs to Rook suddenly. The sun is up, and everyone has the pupil size of a bunch of predatory birds.

"Ok, wait, everyone go find some sunglasses so we don't get eye damage."

Rook sighs. Apparently dosing the entire county with mind-altering drugs was all it took to get three Seeds to do what they were told.

Faith comes back wearing a pair on her face and a pair in her hair, and John comes back with a pair of sunglasses, chips, gum and a magazine with a plane on the front. Rook doesn't suppose there's anyone to pay at the moment, so it probably doesn't matter. 

Joseph has found his yellow/orange sunglasses somewhere, or a different but similar pair at least. Rook doesn't know whether to be happy about his more unnervingly familiar face or not. But he brings some sunglasses for Rook as well. Which he unfolds, and then reaches up to slot over Rook's eyes. And there's absolutely no way that all of the Bliss is out of Rook's system, because when Joseph's hands slide slowly and indulgently down his face afterwards, he doesn't mind at all.


	4. Preaching To The Choir

John complains about being made to sit in the back, when he apparently has important contributions to give, though what those contributions are he doesn't actually share with everyone. Faith complains that she can't see where they're going. Joseph tells them both to contemplate whether God would be disappointed in their ungratefulness, when they are on a mission of salvation, and they both shut up. 

Rook uses the moment of quiet to check the radio. Something he's annoyed that it never occurred to him to do before. But that turns out to be one of the most unsettling things that's happened so far, because he finds nothing helpful or encouraging as he slowly stabs through the bands. If anything it just serves as further proof that things have gone crazy everywhere.

There's a station playing the same song, over and over again -

A station that seems to be nothing but a woman listing all the wrongs her husband has ever done to her -

A station where an uncomfortably breathy voice is reciting passages from the bible -

A strangely familiar voice - is that Sharky? - doing covers of what sounds like pop songs that are twenty years out of date, and sung wildly off key -

A man's voice, throaty and exhausted, giving advice on how to protect yourself from some sort of parasitic insect that will eventually grow inside you and replace you -

A man weeping heavily, like he'll never be happy again -

And a station that's just a cat (or a person pretending to be a cat) meowing continuously, and nothing else -

Rook turns the radio off.

"Well that answers one question," he says firmly. It looks like there's not going to be any help from the rest of the county. And Rook has neither the manpower nor the resources to find everyone that might need help out there, let alone start providing it.

"The Bliss has spread its arms wide," Joseph agrees. "Taken in with every breath, righteous and unrighteous alike."

Rook thinks he should be grateful that Joseph's drug-induced crazy is the sort that almost makes sense. The sort that he can have a conversation with at least, even if he's doing most of the work. Though he suspects that his and Joseph's definitions of righteous people is probably very different. Rook's surprised that he apparently now qualifies to be honest.

"Yeah, I don't know what we're going to do about that. There's another chemist up North, I think, but that's a lot of Bliss to wade through. Worst case scenario I take a flamethrower to as much of the Bliss as I can, and hope that helps." Rook doesn't even know how you'd even start trying to inoculate someone against pollen. Is that even a thing? Would allergy medicine help at this point? It's something to think about, he supposes. He'll have to grab some if he sees any. It's not like they can kill people if he's wrong. The worst thing they can do is absolutely nothing. Right? You can't be allergic to allergy medication can you? Why doesn't he know this? He remembers the Sheriff's long talk on emergency procedures for the county, in the event of a disaster, and they covered none of this, absolutely fucking none of it. 

"You are destruction, that is your purpose," Joseph tells him, as if he doesn't have a problem with Rook destroying the gift of insight that the Bliss has apparently given everyone. "To be among men so that they may know their weaknesses. So that they may know their end has come." Rook pulls a face at him, firstly for making that sound so grim and upsetting, and second for the insinuation that Rook is just _crushing_ everything in his path

"I don't destroy _everything_ ," he says. Because he's been trying his best to save people since he got here. Most of the explosions have either been dangerous cult property, or caused by people firing rockets at him. He doesn't feel like he should be blamed for that.

Joseph looks at him from the other seat, and it's a little weird for him to have the sunglasses back again. Rook keeps getting his Josephs confused, they keep sliding together in a way that unsettles him. Except for the hair, which Rook can't do as well as Joseph, it always ends up soft and loose when he does it, fine strands escaping at the sides and the bottom. It makes him look less brutal, less stark. Which is probably part of the reason he hasn't started making Joseph do it himself.

"I tried to make you one of mine," Joseph says slowly. "To put you on the path to atonement, and you resisted me. So I tried to destroy you, and again you resisted me. But then I was at peace, and you came to me, shielded me, and worshipped me."

"I feel like you're trying to make a point," Rook says. "But you're crazy, and I'm really fucking tired."

Joseph doesn't explain any further than that. Either because he's being mysterious or he's forgotten what he was talking about. He leaves Rook in his confusion, smiling at him, like he knows a secret.

There's whispering from the back of the car, and honestly at this point Rook is almost afraid to look. If they're having sex back there -

John and Faith are taking turns to illustrate Rook's 'Book of Joseph'. A thing Joseph seems absolutely fine with. Which makes sense because Rook has flicked through it, and so far it just looks like the confused fever dream of a madman, pages of repetition and confused sentences, all the words to Amazing Grace, a scratched drawing of Joseph's church, a short, jumbled description of their journey so far, a very intense description of an apocalypse, and something that reads a bit like a metaphorical religious allegory, but which Rook actually suspects is graphic and explicit in nature, and possibly about him.

Still the book seems to matter to Joseph, since he remembers to scoop it up everywhere they go. Rook supposes it makes a great distraction if nothing else. As far as he can tell, it's not so much a rewritten version of the Book of Joseph, but an idea for a church that only exists inside Joseph's head. It's also a journal of everything that's happened to them so far. Only Joseph's grasp of things which are happening, and things which might happen, and things which he'd just _like_ to happen tends to get confused. So the book would help absolutely no one without some idea of how Joseph's mind works. It's basically a mystery to everyone but him.

Eventually Joseph seems to declare that the silence has gone on long enough, because he starts singing, quiet but determined.

Rook doesn't know the song but something about it is vaguely familiar. It's the sort of thing you'd hear in church, a place he'd always avoided in favour of activities that didn't force him to sit still and be quiet. But John and Faith clearly know it, because they both join in. They both sing with Joseph like they can't help it. Rook doesn't feel like he can complain too hard. 

Though it doesn't take long until it's very loud in the car, and Rook can't even open the window because he's afraid the pollen will get in.

They don't stop until he reaches John's Ranch.

 

~

 

The sky's dark when they get there, day largely lost to the search for Joseph's family, or most of it anyway. Rook has no idea where Jacob is, and to be honest he's not in a hurry to find out. He wouldn't be surprised if the eldest Seed had some sort of action plan for this exact scenario, in some folder somewhere. You could probably take over an entire population like this, and none of them would notice.

The ranch is dark as well, and the building looks oddly threatening. It makes Rook wish he had something other than the knife he'd hurriedly strapped to his thigh in town. The house isn't empty, there are a few peggies milling around inside, one in the doorway, one sleeping in a bush, and one weeping in a small cordon of sandbags, like he can't work out how to get over or around them. They don't make a single threatening move, one of them waves at Rook like he thinks he's someone else.

Rook moves a row of the sandbags. Because otherwise it's going to bother him.

Apparently it never occurred to any of the peggies to put on any lights. John kicks them all out, and then strides through the house flicking on every single one.

"Come in, come in. I'll make some drinks for everyone. We can all sit together. We can talk. We can sing again. Rook can join in this time. He probably has a great voice, he must have huge lungs."

Rook does not have a great voice, not that John or anyone else needs to know that.

"No, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to skip drinks and singing. I'm tired and I need to sleep," Rook says simply. "And I don't care what any of you set on fire in the night. I'm going to find one of your guest rooms and I'm going to sleep in it." He's assuming this place has guest rooms, it's enormous. God, driving the three of them here was hard enough. But if he'd let anyone else do it he'd technically be guilty of letting someone drive under the influence, and Rook would have to arrest them. Honestly if there's a test for this stuff he's probably not completely clean either. But, yes, arresting, because he's a deputy, that is a thing he used to do, what feels like at least ten thousand years ago.

Where are the stairs. He can make it up some stairs, probably.

"No, Rook." John catches him at the bottom of the stairs, wavering on his feet, smelling like alcohol and sugar. "You don't need to find another room, you can sleep with me." 

Rook blinks at him. "John, that's...that's a nice offer, but I need to sleep. I'm exhausted." 

"My bed is enormous, there's more than enough room for both of us." He has both hands on Rook's arms now, pulling gently.

Rook raises an eyebrow, because he's seen beds that big but he's never slept in one, and, _God_ , that would be amazing. He very rarely fits, his feet always end up somewhere cold and uncomfortable.

John smiles, all teeth and encouraging eyes. Like he can see Rook's moment of guilty wavering and wants to dig his heels into it.

"You won't even have to do anything. I'll do all the work."

Rook can't help the snort of laughter at the abrupt turn from subtle to blunt. Though his sleep deprived brain draws a mental image of that against his will, and he has a horrible feeling that it's drawing it from memory, rather than imagination. Yes, it is, because he remembers Joseph had been down by the river, baptising everyone again, because he had new words for the ceremony. John had - John had been persuasive, and tempting, and then just _wrecked_ under Rook's hands - God, it's still hard to believe these memories are actually his sometimes.

"John -" Rook starts again, and then can't think of a good way to gently refuse. He can't think up any excuses that don't sound stupid, and the honesty of 'no, you're drunk, out of your mind, and I'm pretty sure you'd carve into me like a pumpkin if you weren't,' is probably neither appropriate nor helpful right now.

John looks at something behind Rook's shoulder, confident smile sliding into something more uncertain.

"Joseph can come if you want, if he wanted, I could watch, or he could." John smiles again, tentative but hopeful, as if he's trying to work out if that's something Rook wants. Or whether it's something that will just upset him. Rook can almost see him searching for the right thing to say, the right thing to offer him, that will make Rook say yes. Rook feels bad for him, it's a little painful to watch.

He lifts his hands, lays them on the solid curves of John's shoulders, and very briefly squeezes.

"Go and get some sleep, John," he says. "Everyone is exhausted." 

Rook leaves the car keys near the door, hopes to God no one decides to drive off in the middle of the night. He drags his way up to the top floor of the ranch. He finds a room. He finds a disappointingly average sized bed. Carefully falls into it. Then he throws an arm over his face.

He's somewhere close to sleep when the door clicks open, when a shadow falls over the bed.

Rook sighs into his arm, because that could literally be any one of them.

He pulls his arm away from his face, finds Joseph watching him. He's left his clothes by the door, though he's bought his book with him. Rook can't help but wonder if there was a conversation after he'd left. From what he's seen so far, the brothers don't really argue. Joseph seems to get what he wants through personality, and a general air of creepy authority. Rook had been assuming it wasn't working on him, but maybe he should have been paying more attention.

"Would you like me to read to you?" Joseph proffers the book like it's something they've done before, and Rook can't help the frustrated thought that he should know what to do about that. But he's not sure whether he means the normal version of him, or the high one that was perfectly fine with Joseph doing whatever he wanted with him.

Apparently he's thought about it too long, because there's a knee pushing him over in the bed. 

"You don't get to be naked in my bed," Rook protests, and then can't understand why that does absolutely nothing to dissuade Joseph from sliding in with him. Though he does aggressively stop Joseph from straddling him. Because there's a difference between going too close to the edge and just jumping straight over it. "Ok, we're not going to - that's not going to be a thing that happens."

"I wish to lay a sermon on your skin," Joseph says, like Rook doesn't know _exactly_ what that means. What that probably means, he's inferring a lot from Joseph's previous statements. Of which there have been many.

"And that is entirely because of the plants that you let your little sister cultivate all over the damn county. That have gone insane and contaminated everyone with some sort of madness that makes all of this seem normal. I can't believe you ever thought the Bliss was a good idea. Do you remember when you thought sex was a sin? When you thought everything was a sin? Because I remember that. God, I kind of miss that." Because that hadn't felt as complicated, even if it was occasionally considerably more painful.

"You came to me, you chose me," Joseph tells him, which sounds a lot like 'you started this.' Which Rook doesn't have the memories to dispute right now. But judging by everything else he's seen, he could absolutely have been the one to coax Joseph naked and decide that they were going to be lovers. God fucking damn it. "You begged me to fill the hollow space inside you with my faith." Joseph's fingers slide up Rook's chest, in a way that feels weirdly familiar, and causes something to tip pleasantly inside him.

Rook makes him stop. 

"You bid me lead you to salvation, and join with you and show you the way." Joseph's clearly affronted at being made to stop touching him. "You promised to stand by my side always, against those who would do me harm. To _obey_ me -"

"In my defence, I've been high for three days," Rook says quietly. Not to mention that eventually Joseph will come down as well, and return to being the threatening thundercloud of madness and danger that Rook's more used to. Probably with a bonus grudge on his shoulder due to all the sex they've apparently been having. None of which is Rook's fault.

He doesn't even know what that's going to do to the Joseph Seed he remembers.

Joseph's expression is frustrated now, at Rook's refusal to let him coerce him into dubiously drug-induced sex. Rook doesn't think people refuse Joseph very often, now he's Father of his own religion. He doesn't seem used to things not going the way he wants them to. Joseph sighs, like he thinks Rook is being difficult to test him.

"Fine, if it pleases you better, I will be your vessel tonight," Joseph allows, and starts to slide down his body. "I will let you gather my hair in your fist and choke me silent, and spill your lust inside me."

Rook clenches his hands so tightly on Joseph's wrists that he stills his journey downwards, surprised.

"God, you have the creepiest dirty talk, has anyone ever told you that?" Rook says thinly. 

What was the point he was making?

Shit.

Right, creepy dirty talk, which is making it difficult to think about things. 

"No, no spilling. No one gets to be a vessel for anything, _fuck_." He lets Joseph go, doesn't miss the way he's left white marks on both wrists, that fade slower than he would like. "Shit, sorry."

Joseph bites a sigh in half. 

"You are a mountain of frustration," he says, in a dark, familiar tone that Rook is a little more used to hearing out of him. 

Rook knows the feeling. He reaches up and unpicks the band he left in Joseph's hair, until it falls weakly loose. Then he drags his fingers through it, finds it overwarm, and slightly greasy. But it makes Joseph's eyes soften, half shut, gently tip into the sensation.

"It's been a long fucking day, so how about we skip the part where I spend the rest of the night trying to keep you out of my pants and you go to sleep instead." Because Rook doesn't want to be the last sensible adult for miles, but apparently that's what the world has given him today. 

"I want us to be joined," Joseph says, breathless and demanding. "As we were meant to be. God has willed it."

Rook doesn't think he did, he's almost certain that God willed no such thing. The crazy plants however, that sounds like something they might have done. The crazy plants seem all about causing people to make bad choices.

"The plants mostly willed it, and the chemicals in your brain put up no resistance."

Joseph gives a low rumble of disagreement. But his eyes are fluttering in longer and longer pauses.

Rook encourages him to lay down, tries not to be surprised when Joseph claims as much of his side as he can cover. He could push him off, pushing him off is a thing that Rook is more than capable of doing. But he's so very tired, and Joseph has finally stopped moving, stopped demanding, stopped confusing him by treating him like a lover. Rook tries very hard to ignore the sheer quantity of nudity going on. 

"I have no idea how this started but you realise it has to stop, right? We're enemies, your entire plan so far seems to have been to convert me or kill me. Your whole family has been trying to kill me since I got here, in inventive and terrible ways. You've terrorised an entire county and I can't just - "

There's been a long moment of quiet, and Rook realises that Joseph is asleep.

Rook doesn't know if this is better, this is probably not better. But Joseph isn't the only one who's utterly exhausted. Rook really needs to sleep as well. He's barely eaten in three days, he's what feels like the last sane man for a hundred miles, he's trying to keep as many people as he can alive, and his three mortal enemies keep trying to have sex with him...again. 

He actually doesn't think he's doing too badly, considering.

Joseph is too warm against him, limbs angular and not entirely comfortable, and he makes low, pained noises in his sleep.

Rook drags fingers through his hair until he settles, and then realises what he's doing and makes himself stop.

 

~

 

_Rook can't sleep, everything inside him is moving. It's like he's constantly filling with water and overflowing, spilling over. Something inside him keeps instinctively trying to stop it from happening, from catching the overflow. It keeps dragging him away from sleep, like falling in a dream._

_Joseph isn't sleeping either, curved over next to him, talking to himself, and writing slowly in the margins of a book he's found._

_Rook doesn't want to disturb him, but he gets distracted by the folded curve of Joseph's spine, the gentle dips and rises of bone under skin. They're smooth to the touch, maybe because there are fewer scars here. Eventually Joseph stops talking and just makes quiet noises instead, eyes shut while Rook drags his fingers, over and over._

_"Tell me what you saw," Rook asks into the quiet._

_"I see a lot of things," Joseph opens his eyes and looks at him. "Things I try to make other people see. Though they refuse, they remain wilfully blind. Things which should not be real, though people clamour for them anyway - things which I cannot stop." He stops, closing the book and setting it down. "Which ones do you want to know about."_

_Rook flattens his hand on skin, feels the warmth, but he can't feel a heartbeat from this side._

_"Tell me what you see at the end, when the world ends, when everything changed, the catastrophe."_

_"The collapse," Joseph corrects. He makes the word sound heavy, too much all at once. It rolls in his throat like it hurts to come out._

_Rook wants to know, because he can see it inside him, gnawing at him, and part of him wants to know if he can gouge it out, if he can make Joseph whole._

_Joseph looks at him for what feels like a long time, frown painful on his face. Rook can't stop himself from reaching up and trying to smooth it away._

_"Everything is burning," Joseph says eventually, soft like it hurts to think about. "The sky is orange and red, dripping heat that sets the air on fire, red points of light, and everywhere it curls and touches, the world sparks and burns anew."_

_Joseph flattens a hand on Rook's chest and leans into him._

_"There's silence, empty silence, and there are bodies jumbled together in piles, eaten away by fire where they lay, man made liquid. Blackening and coming apart, bones breaking in the heat, splintering over the crack of flame. Until there's nothing left. Until there are just charred pieces, though they still scream like they're alive. The buildings are collapsing into the ground, bringing the mountains down, black pieces folding, towers falling, man's frail accomplishments turned to ashes. And the whole world is roaring, pounding like a thousand drums -"_

_Rook slides his hand up Joseph's arm, to his face, covers his mouth, makes him stop talking. Because he's shaking, whole body broken with it, eyes a long way away, breathing like he's stuck somewhere he can't break away from. Rook touches the curve of his throat, the side of his face, tries to pull him back._

_He says his name, soft, then softer still, draws him all the way down. Until Joseph is curled into him, breathing too fast into his neck, hands curled white around him._

_"I'm sorry," Rook says quietly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you see that again. I'm sorry."_


	5. A Man For All Seasons

Rook wakes up far too hot, with Joseph Seed's arm curled round his waist, and John Seed snoring in his ear on the other side. Someone is tucked at the foot of the bed, a confusing weight on his ankles, and they are attempting to tickle him. He's pretty sure that one has to be Faith.

He has no fucking idea which one of those things to deal with first. He's not sure when he lost control of this situation, if he was ever in control of it in the first place. But there were probably some points where he should have said no. Where he should have discouraged everything a little bit harder. Points where he could have been more firm about...everything. 

This feels very unprofessional. This is not him working hard to solve the disaster that's swallowed the county up.

He reaches down and folds a hand round Joseph's wrist, slowly draws it free. His stomach twitches at the slow drag of Joseph's fingers over it, and his whole body decides that's a sensation that might lead to things, and thoroughly approves of it. Rook overrules it, because he has a much better grasp of the situation. Joseph murmurs something confused into Rook's shoulder that's too crushed to be intelligible. A vibration through the skin that Rook refuses to react to.

Two months ago Rook had thought he had a handle on the way things were going to go for him. He had a job that made sense to him, that he was learning how to do to the best of his abilities, he had colleagues he respected. He almost never got shot at, no one wanted to convert him into a cult, or carve anything into his chest, or have weirdly religious-themed sex with him, while under the influence of drugs. Sure it was still hard to buy boots and pants, but everyone had their own problems. 

But now he's here - waking up in bed with three members of the Seed family, all of which he's pretty sure he's had sex with in the last three days.

He has no idea how he got from there to here. He was there for all of it, and yet he still has no clue.

Solving one problem at a time seems to be working for him so far, and he's sticking to that with a sort of desperation that he hopes will get him somewhere bearable in the end. His most pressing problem right now is the fact that he needs to piss. That one he can probably solve.

There's no careful way to get out from under the three of them without waking anyone, since two of them are mostly on him. He tries not to crush anyone getting out, and ignores all their grumbled complaints.

When he gets back John and Faith are up. Joseph seems to be missing. John's dressing in his own clothes, Faith however, is wearing Rook's shirt.

"That's literally one of the only shirts for miles that fits me properly, I'm going to need that back," he tells her. 

She smiles and twirls in it. "I think it suits me better."

"Where's Joseph?" Rook asks, surprised at the flare of unease his absence creates. Part of him seems to have gotten used to Joseph being around. Which is troubling in a few ways, but he doesn't feel up to looking at them right now.

"He's fine, he's writing his sermon outside again," John says, as if that's something he's told Rook before, like it's a perfectly normal thing for Joseph to do first thing in the morning. Which it probably is. Rook has literally only known the man for a month, or really the last four days if you wanted to be exact...or biblical. And even his own head thinks that's a hilarious joke.

"Right, that sounds weirdly like Joseph." 

"He'll be done in an hour, he likes the light, says it's pure." John smiles and shakes his head like he has no idea what that even means. Rook's glad he's not the only one.

"John, are you ok to keep an eye on things while I shower?"

John makes an interested noise, caught half out the doorway. He leans back into the room.

"Do you want company?" he asks, and his smile is wide and hopeful. "Because I could keep you company." There's a hint of pleading there too, strangely frayed. Rook almost feels bad for desperately trying to find another polite way to say no. Because he's not going to have sex with John Seed again. There are so many reasons why that's a bad idea, the least of which being that the man is currently drunk on the Bliss. 

"That would be...nice, but you have to keep an eye on Faith," Rook tells him. He tries his best to make it sound important. He must get something right, because John looks behind him, at where his sister is making the bed to a design of her own invention. Which seems to involve a lot of folding. 

"Right," John says, and now there's both disappointment and guilt. "You're right, I forgot. I'll do that."

Rook clasps the back of his neck, awkwardly because comforting John Seed is not a thing he would have ever imagined himself doing and now he's done it twice in as many days.

"You're a good brother," he tells him, because that's something that's probably true. For all the trauma, and violence, and empty space that John's made of, he does seem to genuinely care about his siblings. And Rook doesn't think John gets many compliments. Mostly because he's usually doing something everyone wants to punch him in the face for. Rook definitely prefers this version of John Seed. Because he hasn't wanted to punch him at all yet. He's sure that will change as soon as he comes down and starts trying to stab him again.

John's face does something scrunched and unexpected, then there's a smile, not as practiced as his normal smiles, something tugged up by surprise.

"I could be better," he says at last, more honest than he wants to be. 

"In your defence, John. You have a pretty demanding family." Rook squeezes gently, before letting him go.

 

~

 

_There's a dead man in the woods. He's stretched out beneath a tree, limbs spread like he was trying to get comfortable._

_His throat is a tangled mixture of red and white. Rook thinks something ate him. John is crouched by the mess of it, fingers curiously moving the leaves around his head._

_"Do you think anyone misses him?" he wonders. The question seems important to John, but Rook doesn't know the answer, so he just shrugs. He feels weirdly like there's something he's supposed to do about the man, something he's supposed to say. Something important. But he can't remember what._

_The dead man watches him, expectant, patient._

_"Should I do something?" he asks. Because John might know._

_"Joseph would have words," John suggests._

_Rook doesn't think he meant words. But he's not sure._

_"I don't know any words." Rook doesn't think the sermons Joseph shares with him are meant for this._

_John looks up at him. "We should bring Joseph here."_

_That's a good idea, Joseph will know what to say. He'll know what Rook is supposed to do._

_It's warm out here. The air smells like candy, light on his tongue, it feels poppable, like a bubble._

_John must think so too, because he leans up and tries to taste it._

_Lying down next to the dead man seems rude, but Rook doesn't want to move him. John doesn't seem to mind. He shoves at Rook's jeans, until they hit mid-thigh, so they can be naked together, naked against each other, a grinding crush of weight, that John doesn't protest under. He coaxes Rook into movement, fingers pushing between them, trying to touch and be touched at the same time._

_He's whispering things he wants Rook to do to him against the side of his face, not all of them are nice, not all of them are clean, and they make something sharp and weighty roll and roll in Rook's stomach. Not sure whether to be lust, or confusion, or something else entirely, something hurt and strange_

_But every new thing he shares makes John's breath catch, makes him pull harder at Rook's waist, makes him hiss something guilty and warm into his mouth._

_It's like he's telling Rook all the things he's not supposed to say. Because when he runs out of things he just apologises, over and over, until he comes between them, fierce and warm against Rook's skin. Rook pushes himself up on his arms, and slides through the mess of it in quick, impatient movements, trying to find his own edge of pleasure. John touches him through it, and says his name, and he doesn't apologise any more._

_The dead man watches them._

_Rook wonders if he minds._

 

~

 

John Seed has an indecently nice shower in his ranch house. There's probably something to that, something that John should feel guilty about. Rook doesn't care because he's currently making use of it. The water is warm and just strong enough to gently pummel every part of him awake. Though he's a little wary about turning around too much, because he's not sure exactly how old his tattoo is. Ignoring that, this is possibly the best he's felt in days. Whatever was left in his system has to be gone, because he feels a little guilty for indulgently standing in the spray, for far longer than he probably should. But it's a big shower, and really, really nice.

He'd locked the door though, because he's not stupid.

 

~

 

John has eggs in his kitchen, after a search through various cupboards Rook also finds flour, sugar and milk. It's almost like this is a real kitchen for real people, as if John Seed is not just a violent psychopath who tortures people for an insane cult, he also bakes. Or one of his brothers does. That shouldn't be so amusing, it really shouldn't. The Seeds are terrible, awful people.

Faith dances past him and tucks a flower behind his ear.

"Good morning."

She kisses him, a crushed moment of sweetness against his mouth, and then dances away again.

Rook sighs at the ingredients he's been absently shuffling together. Because he needs to eat something. They probably all need to eat something.

"Ok, breakfast today is apparently going to be scrambled eggs or pancakes," he mutters to himself.

"Pancakes!" John Seed hooks fingers into Rook's belt loops and curves in behind him, where if he stretches up he can just about hook his jaw over Rook's shoulder. He still smells like alcohol, and less pleasantly like alcohol that's been asleep all night. So clearly Rook is the only person who thinks showers are important. He's not sure how to fix that without it ending somewhere he regrets. Somewhere soapy and inappropriate and full of regret.

But John makes an interested noise at the prospect of breakfast, and no longer tries to take anyone's clothes off, so Rook's letting it slide.

"I didn't know you made pancakes. Faith, Rook can make pancakes. Rook's making us pancakes." 

That wasn't exactly what Rook intended here.

"John, I am not -"

"I want eggs!" Faith decides, hiking herself up onto the side next to them. 

"Faith, get off the side, your dress is covered in dirt." Rook has no idea where his shirt went. He feels like that's a problem for after breakfast.

"Eggs though?" Faith says, eyes pleading. 

"If you get down," Rook tells her, because honestly that's probably the fastest and most helpful breakfast he can do right now.

"Put onions in them," she says, as she lowers herself towards the floor, with no care that it make her dress ride up. Rook needs to make John give her a pair of his boxer shorts. He really does, it's distracting.

"Who puts onion in scrambled eggs?" Rook wants to know

"And mushrooms, and pickles," Faith adds, with far too much glee.

"You're just naming things you saw in the fridge," John says through his teeth. "Rook, do not listen to her."

Joseph reappears in the doorway, looking windswept and serene. He's apparently been writing his sermons in Rook's notebook. So he'll probably try and read them to him later. Joseph does like feedback on his work. Though Rook's pretty sure his current work is not going to win him any awards. It's for a very specific audience. Joseph drifts over to him, and Rook's holding a bottle of milk and a whisk, and half leaning against the side, so he has no real way of stopping the kiss. In his defence no one else tries to stop it either, even though they should. Joseph's hands are chilled on his face, and they slide away slowly. It's not like it's the worst thing he's let Joseph do. 

Rook decides to pretend the whole thing didn't happen.

Faith is now ferrying juice from the table to the fridge, humming as she goes.

Rook puts John in charge of the eggs, which he seems to take very seriously. Because Rook can't do everything, and also because it's really difficult to fuck up eggs - assuming no one puts pickles in them that is. Rook makes the much demanded pancakes, next to him. Which isn't half as much of a chore as he's expecting. John is cheerful and doesn't try to stab anything that isn't food related. He actually talks to him, he shows him where everything is, he makes jokes about eggs, and he smiles like he never gets to do this. If he was a normal person Rook would probably really like him.

Though Rook flatly refuses to cut the pancakes into shapes, because no one is ten years old. 

Faith puts four plates on the table, wavers confused with a fifth, before adding that as well. Rook stops cooking long enough to drag Joseph over and put his hair up again, which John seems to find hilarious for some reason.

It's very strange sitting at the table with Joseph, John and Faith Seed. It doesn't get any less weird when the other three lapse into comfortable if slightly confusing conversation, and then share condiments like they're not a bunch of violent, religious lunatics bent on prepping for the end of the world, and crushing any resistance with terrible violence. Rook knows from experience how much they can feel like an unstoppable wave of madness and determination, dragging people to atonement or death against their will.

But for all that everyone is pumped full of so much Bliss that they no longer can think straight - this feels almost offensively normal.

This feels like something they've probably done before. Maybe with Jacob in Rook's place.

Faith steals things off of Rook's plate, while John shares, aggressively, with everyone, and Joseph pours orange juice with the sort of slow, steady concentration that's almost hypnotising. Then everyone just...eats breakfast. Which is a weird sort of intimacy that Rook didn't expect to be party to, one that feels weird to even exist in the middle of.

"Has anyone seen any animals since this started?" he asks. Because now that it occurs to him, he hasn't seen any for a while. Normally the county seems ready at a moment's notice to throw a wolverine at his face. Or put a bear in front of his truck. He hasn't even seen any wolves skulking around the place, and they're fucking everywhere once you hit this side of the river. It's like they've all fled the county, or gone into hiding.

"I saw a bear trying to eat a car," Faith offers. "I don't mean to find delicious things inside, it was climbing it, and biting it."

"Are you sure it wasn't trying to have sex with the car?" John asks, pointing his fork in her direction. He seems to have deemed himself the table's expert in things having sex with other things. Rook's not exactly going to take that one away from him either. 

Faith seems to think about it for a minute, then accepts that could be an alternate explanation for what she'd seen.

Rook thinks that you probably do get bears that stupid under normal circumstances, but it seems like a pretty big coincidence.

"Because I haven't seen any. I was wondering if they were avoiding the pollen, or if the Bliss was killing them. We know normal Bliss fucks them up. But this is...not manufactured, pure somehow, from the plant. Some different strain of Bliss?"

"Jacob would know, his wolves like the Bliss," Faith says.

"I wouldn't say they _like_ it," John says quietly, around a mouthful of pancake. "It's not really something he gives them much of a choice over. Though they certainly make the best of it, you have to give them that."

"We should find Jacob," Joseph pronounces, when that's not what Rook had meant at all. When he's too deep into a pancake to complain without spitting everywhere. 

And, no, they most certainly do not need to find Jacob. That is a whole world of problems waiting to happen.

"Yes." John points his fork at Joseph. "Yes, Jacob needs to be here with us. The whole family solving this together."

"Jacob does not need to be here," Rook grumbles once he's swallowed, because he can't think of a single way that will help the situation. 

But he is not the head of this crazy family. He's not even a member of this crazy family, and his ability to steer it only seems to work every once in a while. So he eats his pancakes and grumbles displeasure while John shares his favourite stories about Jacob, mostly with Rook, since everyone else already knows them, and John seems to like Rook's attention.

An hour later, Rook's debating whether he wants to be the sort of person who washes John Seed's dishes. Probably not, but he did make more than a few of them dirty, and he feels like delegating the task will just leave broken dishes all over the floor. Does he care if John Seed's kitchen is full of broken dishes? More importantly, why on earth is he worrying about this so much? Let John Seed come down from his high to find grubby old plates stacked in his sink. He could always delegate the job to some hapless peggie.

Joseph appears beside him with the air of a man who wants his attention.

"Hmm?" He's still considering the dishes.

"John is not allowed to have alcohol," Joseph tells him. Which is a strange and unhelpful statement, but Rook should probably be getting used to that. This one however might actually have a point to it. So Rook looks over, to where John has indeed acquired himself three bottles of beer from somewhere. It's possible he brought them from the bar yesterday. Rook wasn't paying that much attention to what was going on in the car. He certainly didn't think to rifle through John Seed's pockets for contraband. He's pretty sure everything John owns at this point counts as contraband.

"You realise he's high right? You realise _everyone_ is high?"

"John is not allowed alcohol," Joseph says again, firmly, like it's important enough to tell Rook twice. "We are strong for him, when he cannot be strong for himself."

Right, John has problems with saying yes to things. So maybe there's a history of self-abuse and bad decisions there. Important enough to drag its way up through the mess Joseph's head has become. Still, Rook has to wonder why Joseph isn't the one telling John this and taking his booze away. Isn't he technically in charge? Does he want Rook to be the bad cop here? Does he perhaps want Rook to put the beer on a really high shelf? 

He sighs and pushes away from the counter, passes by the table and scoops up John's bottles in one hand.

"No, no, that's mine," John follows him to the sink.

"Joseph says no, and we do what Joseph tells us. Because he's in charge, and he loves you, and knows what's best for you and all that."

John sags against the counter and watches Rook pour them out. Rook would have kind of liked to have drunk them himself at some point, but he's probably had enough mind-altering shit in the last few days, and it almost certainly would have sent the wrong message. John makes far more familiar irritated noises, all clenching teeth and unpleasantness, hovering somewhere on the edge of reacting. This is a John Seed that Rook knows slightly better. One he'd met while tied to a chair, the glass sharp one with no restraint, all strangled needs and determination. The one that wants to lash out.

"You know why Joseph made me take them," Rook says quietly. Because John does, he has to.

John's restless energy almost feels painful to watch. He fists his hands in Rook's shirt and grumbles something unhappy. He doesn't try and grab for the bottles, instead he leans in and kisses him, mouth acid bitter, and Rook honestly doesn't know if it's punishment or apology. But it's not rage and it's not violence. So just this once, Rook lets him, he lets himself be kissed for the third time this morning. Because he understands, even though he's out of it now, he understands the whole world being a maelstrom you can't control. 

Eventually John sighs against the curve of his jaw, beard dragging against the skin, he mumbles something about Rook being a shit that never lets him have any fun, before he moves away. 

Rook returns to Joseph with the empty bottles, clanks them all down in front of him.

"Are you happy now?" Rook asks.

Joseph gives him a long look, as if the question was far more complicated than he meant it to be. Eventually he simply nods.

"Good, put your boots on so we can go and see if your big brother has accidentally brainwashed himself." And if Jacob brainwashes him again Rook is leaving, everyone else can be in charge of their own bad decisions again. See how long it takes before that turns into a disaster.


	6. Collecting The Whole Set

Rook drives them all North, even though John complains that he wants to do it. Rook refuses, because he's not going to let people under the influence of drugs drive. Even though John protests that he's done that 'literally dozens of times.' Rook's going to pretend that he didn't hear any of that. He's been ignoring a lot of things he would probably have written down and tried to arrest people for a month ago.

Joseph sits in the front, because he's _Joseph_ , and also because he's the sibling least likely to try and molest Rook when he's trying to drive. Though in this company that's really not saying a hell of a lot.

At least no one is singing this time.

It turns out that Jacob isn't at the bunker, he's holed up at the hotel. Which doesn't leave Rook enthusiastic to go and meet him, since the clouds of pollen this side of the river are thick and excitable where they follow the wind. Rook doesn't like being out in so much of it, the air smells sweet and disturbing, something that prods at his memories. It's giving him a headache, making him feel itchy and unpleasant, and he really doesn't want to go under again when they're finally making some progress. 

Rook's not sure he wants to find a Jacob who's half in his own head and hallucinating. He may look like he's all calm on the outside, but there's a damn good chance he's all writhing, crushing pressure on the inside.

There are two guards set out at the front of the hotel, stood beside two aggressively parked trucks and a stack of old Bliss barrels. The guards are both staring into the flood of pollen, and so they both see the group of them at the same time. But they don't react straight away, instead they quietly confer with each other.

When Rook gets close enough the guns they're holding are set more firmly in their direction. Not quite pointed at them, but close enough to unease him.

Faith raises her hands, until John tugs them down again with a vaguely disgusted look.

"You," the first guard they reach says. "All of you, stop moving." The rifle comes up, wavers somewhere around Joseph's midsection. Rook wraps his hand round the barrel and pushes it down.

"Point that at him again, and I will snap it in half," Rook says. Because he hasn't come all this way just for some idiots who shouldn't be trusted with firearms to shoot them because they think they're not real.

The other man isn't listening, or doesn't care, because he takes the opportunity to enthusiastically poke the end of his own rifle into John's shoulder, as if to check the possibility of him being a particularly solid hallucination.

Rook takes the gun from him and hits him with it, and his momentum takes out all three Bliss barrels behind him. He lays on the ground afterwards, and makes quiet noises. And Rook knows he should probably feel guilty about that, but he thinks he's been holding that one for a while.

"Is he getting up again?" Faith asks, leaning like she wants to go over and poke him. Or more likely knowing her mood at the moment, put flowers on him when he can't say no.

John shrugs. "Do we care?"

"You!" Rook points at the man still standing. Because he's had more than enough of this. "Take us to Jacob Seed. So we can get inside out of this fucking snowstorm of bullshit!"

The peggie's gun has drooped to floor level.

"There are supposed to be two of us," he says faintly. "I can't check if there's only one of us."

Rook is an inch away from picking him up by his throat and shaking him until he does something helpful, when he realises that Joseph is slowly squeezing his arm. Rook forces his whole body to relax.

"God fucking damn it," he says. Because he's dizzy and his skin is far too tight. "It's like the crazy ministering to the crazy."

"Because he's the herald of destruction," John mutters, to something Faith whispers.

Rook breathes for a second, and then nods at Joseph to tell him that he's not going to do anything stupid. "Thank you."

Joseph fixes his attention on the last guard standing.

"Take us to my brother," he demands, and that is a much better tone of voice. Rook should have done that.

 

~

 

Jacob is waiting for them at the main doors, arms crossed, expression grim and wary. Rook gets the feeling he was watching that whole exchange. But even from a distance Jacob looks like hell. There's an uncomfortable tilt to the stiffness of him, as if he's been living in that tension long enough to hurt. His eyes are dark underneath like he hasn't slept in a week, mouth a grim line that looks forced rather than natural. There are also long, half-healed scrapes on his throat, and another harsher one that tugs down from his left eye. 

Jacob holds a hand up when they get close, until they stop. Then he prods all three of his siblings, and eyes them for a long moment, before finally grunting something satisfied.

"You're real then." Jacob sounds surprised, and something that's almost too tired to be relief. For all that Rook doesn't like the man very much, he can't hate him for being relieved to know his family hasn't perished unnoticed in a Bliss field somewhere.

Joseph spreads his arms, as if to demonstrate that he is indeed real. Rook's not sure how any hallucination could possibly do the man justice. Jacob exhales, draws him in and gives him a stilted, awkward embrace. Joseph is more enthusiastic, until Jacob grumbles complaint and loosens reluctantly in his grip, so Joseph can hug him properly.

"Shit, I kept seeing you outside, but you were never actually there, or you didn't have a face, or your face was wrong." Jacob sighs deeply, like the memory still bothers him. "I knew it wasn't you, most of me knew it wasn't you."

"I am whole now," Joseph assures him. As if the idea of a face-stealing monster in the woods doesn't bother him. It must be nice to see the world like that. "Our family is whole now." 

Jacob grumbles something inaudible and eases him back, looks at him, as if to check again that Joseph isn't some imposter in disguise. Then he turns to John, who gets a one armed hug and a careful smack against his cheek. Faith doesn't wait to be greeted, she just hugs them both at the same time, until Jacob sighs and carefully pats her hair.

"It's good that you all found each other. That you were there to protect each other." He waits until they all separate and stand watching him, expectantly, before he speaks again. "What are you doing with him?" Jacob tilts his head towards Rook, who's not going to be insulted by that, it's a fair question considering. He's been asking himself the same question for two days.

"I have put my faith inside him, and claimed him for myself," Joseph says simply. "There were vows, he is our family too now."

"Huh," Jacob says, as if there's nothing weird about that at all. "Come on inside then."

He leads them all inside, shuts and bolts the main doors behind them, and Rook doesn't even care if he's going to be shot, or brainwashed, or brainwashed and then shot. He's just happy to be out of that cloying smell. To be away from the thickness of it.

Jacob leads them into the dining room, kicks out a selection of chairs.

"Pratt, we have guests."

A shape appears in the doorway. The last time Rook had seen Pratt it had been through bars, drugged and half under Jacob's influence, head feeling like it was split open with intent to pour something new and unpleasant inside. Pratt had looked almost as bad as Rook had felt then. But Staci actually looks much better now. He's bruised and pale, a little too thin, and the top of his nose is split in an untidy line. But he's also clean, and calm, and he's missing that jittery, frightened obedience Jacob had dragged out of him. 

There's an awkward, surprised smile when he sees Rook. He heads straight for him, and he doesn't seem bothered by who Rook's brought with him.

"Pratt," Rook says. "How are you?"

"Rook, wow, hey." Pratt nods, hands lifting to grip at Rook's arms. Tight and then tighter, a flex of surprise and relief. "I'm good, it's good. It's good to see you whole."

"You too," Rook says, and he means it. 

"You were out in that?" Pratt doesn't seem to know whether to sound horrified or impressed. "That's not smart. That shit will send you crazy. I don't want you to end up locked in a room upstairs. I mean you'll come out of it a little eventually, but it's not easy to watch. I've been through that myself." He stops, frowns and shakes his head. "It's not easy."

"I'm fine," Rook assures him. Because he thinks he's getting used to calming the fears of people that aren't always in a state to deal with them. 

Pratt shakes his head. "I always forget how big you are," he says absently, like it's just occurred to him. "Shit." Pratt sets his other hand on Rook's chest and pats it, then can't seem to make himself stop.

Rook's a second away from helping him, when Jacob leans forward and grabs his wrist, gently levers it down.

"Why don't you make some drinks for our guests?" He says that surprisingly quietly. It's a suggestion, not a demand.

Jacob sits himself in a chair and stares at them all for a long minute. As if to make absolutely sure one of them hasn't been replaced by a hallucination since he last checked. Rook gets the feeling Jacob has had to do that a lot lately. 

He finally nods at Joseph.

"I tried to get in touch with you. No one was answering their damn radio, and going outside in that when the wind's up - that never ends well." Jacob pulls a face that suggests he tried, and had cause to regret it. "I just had to hope that you'd find a way to get in touch with me eventually. You always do after all. You've always been good at finding us."

There's the thinnest edge of a smile, and for a second Jacob seems to let himself look as tired as he feels.

"Fucking Bliss," he says simply, scratches his face where the scrape down the side is still healing. "I knew that would come back to bite us on the ass." He jabs a finger at Faith. "What did I tell you?"

Jacob leans forward, balanced on his arms.

"You can't always tell what's real and what's not now. That's no way to guard a perimeter, so I have two man teams at all time. If they don't see the same thing then it's not real. If one of them has a moment, goes crazy, the other man pulls him in and I replace them both. They can't stay out there too long though. You start to lose your damn mind. Some of my men aren't even up to that, they can't even be trusted to be on their own. People have to be reminded to eat, to get some sleep, not to gouge at themselves on a whim - I feel like I'm full of fucking beetles, all the time, can't concentrate for shit, seeing things all over the place. Don't trust my own hands to get anything done."

Rook is surprised at how coherent Jacob is. When he'd been half expecting to find him dug deep in his own madness, a danger to everyone around him. He's clearly not fine, his eyes won't stay on anything too long, he's sweating, and there's a restless, repetitive jerk to his left leg, a shake to his left hand, something that seems afraid to be still. It's like Jacob is holding himself and his men together by sheer force of will.

Jacob's eyes cut sideways, to where Pratt is very slowly making drinks for everyone, though he has far too many cups. Some of which, Rook suspects, only exist inside Pratt's own head. 

"Pratt's had to drag a knife out of my hands more than once, he keeps showing up in the middle of the night when they're all crawling inside me. Like he fucking knows, I don't know how he knows. But he stops me from doing stupid shit. Gives me a distraction, helps focus that restless energy -" 

Jacob stops talking for a long moment, just drums his hand on the desk and breathes.

"Probably shouldn't keep saying yes," Jacob continues. "But the fucking night time hallucinations are bad. Still, he's helping. It's easier to see what's not supposed to be there when he's around. Having someone else with me. Someone who'll stop my skin moving, hold it still. Someone who'll let me bury it inside them - " Jacob clears his throat when he seems to realise that they're all looking at him. "But he keeps coming back." he finishes at last.

Rook turns his head, but Pratt's still frowning concentration over the selection of spoons on the side table. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised. He has enough memories of the Bliss dragging its nails down his spine and making him want things that make no sense.

Jacob's hands clench into each other, and then separate and still.

He very slowly relaxes in his sibling's company, piece by piece, it's slow and painful to watch. Like he'd almost forgotten how

 

~

 

Rook lets one of Jacob's men lead him to a room upstairs. Before he leaves, Rook asks him to get him a map of Hope County. It doesn't even seem to occur to him to refuse. Rook spreads it over the bed and stares at it for a while.

Because he's been joking about it since this whole thing started, but it's gotten to the point where he's not sure there's another way to fix this. He's going to have to burn the Bliss, all of it. Burn its pollen out of the air and get everyone their mind back.

 

~

 

Rook goes looking for Jacob, once he's decided that he really has no other option. No one tries to stop him, or asks where he's going, or pays him much attention. He has to wonder how many of them simply assume he's a hallucination. A really big hallucination.

He finds him in the office at the back. Joseph is still with him, seated silently behind him, like Jacob has set him nominally in charge, even though he's in no real state to make decisions or offer guidance right now. Rook's honestly not sure whether Jacob knows that. Or whether Jacob is just doing a very, very good job of pretending to be holding everything together. Rook's been trying that since he came down, and he has to admit to a grudging level of respect for Jacob's willingness to try and do it half out of his mind. And mostly succeed.

Jacob gives him a curious look, as if Rook is the last person he expected to come looking for him. But Joseph says his name when he sees him, smiles and beckons him inside.

"Are you happy now you've found all of your family?" Rook asks. Because he knows Joseph was worried about them, violent crazy people that they are.

"Yes," Joseph says. "We are strong together. Now we can stand against anything." He reaches out, finds Rook's hands and squeezes them.

Rook catches himself smiling at him, and it's not just amusement. It's genuine and pleased, and it makes Joseph tilt his head up, a question, or a temptation on his face. Rook needs to redo his hair, there's a long strand curling free in front of his ear. He leans down and kisses Joseph, because he really can't think of a good reason not to. Though it's weirdly awkward with Jacob in the background, giving off an air of surprised interest and vague mistrust.

It doesn't occur to Rook to question any of it, until it's already happened. Until he's standing against the corner of Jacob's desk, realising what he did without thinking about it. What he did because he wanted to. And he honestly doesn't know whether it's just him, or whether it's the Bliss, the thick coating of it that laid on his tongue when they arrived, or just the memory of the Bliss that's somehow made Joseph feel touchable. He needs to fix this before it swallows him whole again.

He clears his throat. Doesn't look at Joseph, who he can hear turning pages behind him.

"Jacob, how many flamethrowers do you have?" he asks.

Jacob's eyes narrow into something curious and interested. He leans back in his chair and considers Rook. Even with their relative positions, sizes, and Bliss levels, Jacob still feels like he's the one in charge. He's the one Rook needs to convince.

"How many do you need?"

Rook looks down at the map.

"Enough to destroy as many Bliss fields as I can," he says.

Jacob grunts, something amused.

"Do you know how many there are out there? Faith played for keeps."

"Yes, which is why I need you. I need you to sketch down as many locations as you can for me, and I need your men. I need you to pick the ones you think are functioning well enough to come out there, strap on a flamethrower and burn the crop with me." 

"That's still going take a while." Jacob tells him, which isn't a no. But it isn't quite a yes either.

"You have a better plan? Because I'm fully open to suggestions at this point. I think I'm mostly out of whatever this is, by the skin of my teeth. But I don't know if it's permanent. I don't really want to wake up somewhere in the valley missing another three days and have to start all over again."

Jacob does not have a better plan, and it seems to grate on him intensely.

 

~

 

Rook could have gone the rest of his life without knowing what Staci Pratt sounded like when he was getting enthusiastically fucked.

"Do you think Jacob put me in this room on purpose?" he asks.

Joseph looks at him, from where he's sitting loosely cross-legged at the end of the bed. Because apparently he won't sleep anywhere else, and none of his family will say no to him. He's been writing in his journal, tightly and angrily, with a martyred air of displeasure since Rook made him stop touching him, twice.

"Stop pouting, I've told you before, I'm not having sex with you while you're under the influence of Bliss. It's messed up and wrong, and it's not happening." Also the fact that they're still, as far as Rook knows, trying to destroy each other through a combination of violence, religious conversion and madness. They're not friends, they're not lovers. No matter what Rook's body seems to want him to believe. No matter how Joseph looks at him. None of this is real. Rook can't imagine any situation where this would have happened between them, where they would have ended up anywhere close to this. Even if Eden's Gate wasn't a thing, and the Seeds all got some actual help for all their many issues. 

The sound from next door now includes guttural and obscenely graphic descriptions of exactly what Jacob wants to do to Staci. Rook could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that about Jacob either. But his brain is a carnival of bad ideas right now, so of course he's thinking about it. He's thinking about it, but it's not Staci Pratt in his damn head. And he _wants_ it, even though it's not even something he would have considered his thing. He wants it, viscerally and intensely, and the worst thing is he's pretty sure Joseph would let him have it. 

"Yes, I'm aware that they're not fucking helping," Rook mutters, mostly to himself. Can you be half mad? Can you be half drunk on Bliss with no other obvious symptoms. It's like Rook can be lucid but now he has a sensitivity to the stuff or something. Or maybe his body is just grumpy that Rook has cut off the near constant supply of sex it's been having, and is making him pay for it.

"John has found company among Jacob's followers," Joseph points out. As if that's totally fine and not something Joseph would usually consider a moment of weakness that needed to be atoned for. That John would have needed to bleed for. That both of them would have preached against, in a scathing condemnation of sinners. God, this is going to be a shitshow when everyone finally comes down.

Rook has no idea what he's even supposed to say to that?

"So because everyone else is having sex we should be as well?" That's not a good excuse. Because the Bliss makes you want, takes your desires and tangles them up into something solid and weighty, makes it all feel like a good idea, makes it easy. Whether Rook likes it or not, Joseph is his desire right now, and it feels like punishment in so many different ways. "You are aware that when you come down you're probably going to have me nailed to something and then burn this whole county to the ground?" Rook asks. Because he's pretty sure he knows things now that Joseph will hate him for. And Rook's probably going to have to stop him. Or he's going to have to try at least - and he doesn't know if he can do that.

"No, I will forgive you, and we will forge a new path together." Joseph sets his book down, slides closer and kisses him. Rook should push him away, he should make him stop again. But that's not as easy as it sounds, Joseph is persistent and familiar against him. He kisses Rook like he's important, like this thing between them has weight, rather than four days of madness and botanically induced lust. Or maybe Rook really was just out in the pollen too fucking long. Either way, he doesn't resist, instead he tugs at the warm, solid line of Joseph's neck and kisses him until it's either stop, or let him get Rook's pants open.

Which he's already half way doing.

" _Fuck_ , Joseph, stop."

Joseph doesn't protest this time, he settles, indulgent, into Rook's grip.

"Tomorrow you'll set the world on fire," Joseph says quietly. 

That's a very poetic way to describe a torch and burn of the Bliss supply.

"You know that's not usually a good thing, right?"

Joseph laughs, a breathy and unfamiliar sound, and then fits their foreheads together.

"I have faith in you," he says simply.

 

~

 

_Joseph has a book open on Rook's chest, pages spread wide, and Rook could crane his neck to see what it says, but he likes the way he doesn't know what's coming next. He doesn't know the story, he doesn't know how it ends. He can watch Joseph instead. He likes the way Joseph moves his arms, thighs tensing and relaxing around his bare hips, as the rhythm of the words rises and falls._

_This is a sermon just for him. Rook doesn't think church is supposed to be like this._

_He's also enjoying the way Joseph slides his fingers up his chest and digs them in every time he talks about sin, about leading people to salvation. The way his nails drag them slowly back every time he talks about forgiveness. He does it for so long that Rook gets distracted, doesn't even notice when Joseph's book falls away, until he leans into Rook's hands, eyes fixed on him._

_"Is my congregation content to be silent today?"_

_"I want you to lead me," Rook tells him. "I like to watch you, when you do this. I like to feel it in you. You could put your faith in me, fill up all the hollow spaces. So I could see what you see."_

_Joseph shakes his head._

_"I don't want you to see what I see," he says quietly. "There is no comfort in that. It is a punishment for my sins, for my failures, my weaknesses." Something in Joseph sounds raw and open, makes Rook want to put his hand over the wound he's made. He tries, God he tries, but there are so many of them._

_"Does the book protect you from it?" Rook asks. Because he needs to know that something does, that something helps._

_Joseph picks his book up, folds its crumpled pages shut and nods slowly._

_"It is my shield and my purpose. It is the truth I follow, that I warn people against."_

_He looks lost and strangely beautiful in the low light, for all the ragged pieces of him that don't go together right, all the tears in his skin, all the wounds he has given other people._

_"It's good to have purpose," Rook says. Because he thinks he would like that. He's mostly only gone where people tell him to go, where he thinks he would fit. Only he never fits quite right. All the spaces are too small for him. "Share it with me."_

_"I would leave the words on your skin, but I have nothing to write with," Joseph says, tightly mournful. "To have the words with you always. To have you know them, and know me through them."_

_"John could put the words on me." John knows how to make the words stay, sometimes they bleed but sometimes they're dark and beautiful._

_"I don't want John to lead you to salvation." Joseph says, voice complicated, guilty and liquid-hot. "I want you to choose me. I want you to walk the path with me. I want to take you to the river and cleanse you, and take you for my own. You will stay with me. You will join us, and your voice will be raised with ours until we are one voice." Joseph raises his arms to the ceiling, whole body stretching. Rook follows the movement, reaches a hand up to flatten it on the crown at the top of his chest._

_"To love, honour and obey," Rook says to the curve of Joseph's skin, because he heard that somewhere. He remembers that from somewhere._

_Joseph makes a low, broken sound, folds into him and kisses him, doesn't stop kissing him, and it feels like a madness._


	7. Emergency Broadcast, Please Standby

No one makes Staci go back to his room.

Which he's fine with, because he's spent too many nights locked in there, wondering if he was going to be left to rot. 

He much prefers it out of the cell. Though he knows that his freedom is almost entirely because of the things that started appearing where they shouldn't be, chairs, plates, tables, doors. Part of him worried at first that they were people disguised as ordinary things, he knows that's not true now. That's crazy. They're just inanimate things, meant to trick him into believing they were real. But Staci has a system. He has a system now, and he's mostly learned how to tell the difference.

Other people at the hotel are seeing things too, and some people see so many things they can't tell what's real and what's not now, even inside their own head. They can't be trusted not to believe the things in their head over the real world, and then things get messy. The worst affected get taken away, put in a room under guard, where they can't hurt anyone. Only sometimes there aren't enough rooms, or guards.

The dogs all went mad on the first day, scratching and chewing at the wire of the fences, trying to get out, to get away. No amount of strong words, or food, or aggression made any difference. They all escaped eventually, or died in the attempt. Staci can still remember the screaming when they tore through anything and anyone in their way. People who didn't always know what was happening to them. He's been having nightmares about those fucking dogs, and he's stupidly grateful that he's not seeing them everywhere, because he doesn't think he could handle that.

Jacob is trying to hold it all together, though all his careful, commanding stillness is gone, in favour of quivering restlessness and determination. People don't always do what he tells them to now, and sometimes he hurts them for it, but sometimes he just looks lost, like he doesn't know if they deserve it. Because there's just too much now that he needs to control, to keep hold of. Staci thinks Jacob's seeing things too, that he's just as fucking deep in whatever this is as the rest of them. But he has to pretend that he's fine, he has to pretend that he's fine so people believe it. 

Sometimes Staci thinks Jacob is the only reason everything still works.

Except the fucking song, that doesn't seem to work any more. But Staci doesn't feel bad about that at all, because being under that had always felt like drowning.

Jacob hasn't done anything painful to Staci. He hasn't made him do anything, hasn't asked him any questions he doesn't know the answers to. He hasn't called him _weak_. Instead he makes Staci shower, gives him new clothes, then he stares at him for a while, and tells him he still looks like he's mostly all there. Jacob sets him to work in the kitchen, handing out food, making sure people eat, because people forget, people forget to eat now. Part of Staci wants to complain, because he's a deputy and handing out packets of food to confused people is both a waste of his talents and, since it's for Jacob, possibly breaks some sort of 'don't be a traitor' rule. But he has access to all the food he wants, and the peggies that come over sometimes give him things, like they think this works on some sort of barter system.

Staci's not going to tell them otherwise.

He gets used to herding people where they need to go, of sending equipment back to the storage rooms when people forget it. He gets used to breaking up fights, to calming down the men who come in from outside raving or laughing, to guiding the confused, weeping soldiers that used to be some of Joseph's best, to somewhere they can sit in the quiet and relearn how to deal with the world. 

Sometimes Staci thinks that Jacob leaving him here was never about the food at all.

The dining room's almost empty for the night, Staci takes Jacob something, because he hadn't shown up since morning, and if Staci's in charge of making sure people eat then he's in charge of making sure _everyone_ eats. 

The lights in Jacob's room are off, and Staci figures that he's somewhere outside, with his men, pretending everything is fine for whoever needs to believe it. Staci decides to leave the packet on his desk, somewhere the encouragement to eat will be pointed and obvious.

He flicks on the light, and finds Jacob about to carve his arm open with a combat knife.

Staci has hands on him before he thinks about it. Fingers on the damp, straining length of Jacob's wrist, which is hot under his fingers. He can't hold it completely, but Jacob ends up having to drag Staci's weight with him.

"No," Staci tells him. Because this is the sort of thing that's not allowed to happen, one of the things Staci has to stop. He has responsibilities, he remembers, from before all of this, before Eden's Gate.

He flattens his other hand on Jacob's chest, and the man is all hard muscle and weight. But Staci pushes, he fucking pushes until something in his forearm twinges painfully.

"Stop," Staci tells him. "Jacob, stop."

Jacob is trying to push him off, saying something about crawling things under the skin. Staci tries to prise the knife out of his fingers, because it's huge and wide, shining like a fucking nightmare. And Staci knows that the knife is real, it's not one of the things thrown up by his own head. The things Jacob thinks are scratching at him are not real, but the knife is, and Staci can't let this happen. 

"There's nothing there, Jacob, there's nothing under there," Staci tells him, but he can't hold Jacob's wrist. He doesn't have the strength or the experience. Can't make him see that the things in his head aren't real, like the things in Staci's aren't real. But the things in Staci's head have never tried to hurt him.

Staci puts one of his hands on Jacob's face, tries to make Jacob look at him, desperate, because he's going to get through his skin to the muscle beneath, he'll split it open and bleed out everywhere, and if Jacob is gone there'll be no one to hold all of this together, no one strong enough. Staci will be left with the dogs. The dogs who'll come back and fucking eat all of them.

Jacob is still hissing between his teeth, insisting that he has to get them out, louder than Staci's protests. So Staci pushes in close, puts himself between Jacob and the knife. He shushes him, tries to shush into Jacob's mouth, where it's rough and wet - and Jacob catches his hair and twists. Staci's mouth is pushed open, all the way open for Jacob's. For the messy, wet slides of tongue, all roughness and bite and desperation. Over and over and Staci can't think, can't think because this is not fighting.

This is not fighting.

Staci hasn't been kissed since long before all of this, before the crash, before the cells, before Jacob's constant accusations of _weakness_. When Staci wasn't scared all the time, before he no longer trusted the dizzy, traitorous mess of his own head. And he knows he's still full of adrenaline and panic and not entirely all the way right. But the rest of Jacob is still now, soft enough that Staci can claim the knife from the fingers of Jacob's other hand, set it down out of his reach. So this is good, this is good, this is what he wanted. Staci lets Jacob kiss him, lets that raging subside against his mouth, though Staci can't shush him any more. Not like this. Eventually though, Jacob relaxes against him, still breathing too fast, twitching in tiny movements but they're less sharp now.

Staci keeps kissing him, until Jacob's hand goes loose in his hair, holding instead of twisting. It's good, it's been a long time since Staci got to feel that dizzy weight of pleasure. Kissing someone new, someone different, someone who scares him more than anyone ever has. Which shouldn't be good - shouldn't but is.

Jacob's still half pressed to Staci's mouth, hissing his name like he's not sure if Staci did the right thing or not. Staci thinks he did, thinks he did, he must have done. He can feel Jacob, thickly hard against the low plane of his stomach, pressing into him. He doesn't know what Jacob wants. Staci wants to touch him - and it's much harder now to resist the things he wants to, isn't always sure which things he's allowed to want, and which he isn't any more.

He touches Jacob in case it helps, touches where he's warm and then warmer, and Jacob's fingers bite at his wrists, flex and then loosen, like Jacob isn't sure what he wants. But Staci's on his knees before he decides, hoping that Jacob will say yes once he's there, once he has his fingers on Jacob's belt, pants, easing him open, drawing him free with greedy impatience. Jacob's cock is so close, a solid line of heat he could lay his face against. It's sudden and shocking, makes warmth spread inside him. Staci wants Jacob to let him, he wants this in a way he can't form into words. Though he thinks he should try. 

He doesn't need to though, Jacob pulls Staci's mouth open with a hand that shakes. Shades of weakness, Staci thinks, wanting like other people, like normal people. Jacob guides his cock in, an awkward push against the wet length of Staci's tongue which curls, curves, holds him. Makes Jacob swear and grab at his hair and press deeper.

And if there's just one half lucid moment it's then. With Staci on his knees, mouth open, Jacob's cock sliding in and out in quick, rough movements. 

Jacob is talking, words grating and slurred, and Staci knows he won't remember them. But they make him try harder, make him grab at Jacob's hips, breath all stuck in his throat. Jacob's hand moves Staci's head where he wants him, demanding and ungentle. Which is a more familiar sort of Jacob, telling Staci where to go, what to do, when to do it. He relaxes into it, tries not to choke when Jacob jolts uncomfortably against the back of his throat. Until Jacob stills, makes a noise like he's drowning, and Staci's mouth is full and wet, slick against the back of his tongue.

Staci makes a long noise, swallows awkwardly, wants to keep it, keep it. But Jacob's cock slips free of his mouth when Jacob takes a swaying step back, leaving it bitter and empty. Jacob draws his pants back together with shaking hands, zips them, leaves the belt to hang, warm leather against his thigh.

Staci's not sure what happens now. What he's supposed to do now Jacob is quiet again. He breathes and swallows and watches Jacob's face. But Jacob doesn't help him. His hand pushes Staci's hair out of his face, watching him like Staci has done something Jacob wanted but didn't ask for.

Or maybe something he wasn't supposed to do.

Sometimes he's punished for that and sometimes he isn't.

He gets to his feet again, touches Jacob awkwardly not sure if he's still allowed. Jacob looks confused and guilty, which is a strange and unnatural look on him. But he's calm again, he's Jacob again, and he can make everyone do what they're told. He can make sure no one loses themselves outside. He can save everyone like this.

 

~

 

The worst part is the unpredictability.

Some days the pollen is fairly fine, some days it's easy to unpack food, set up a perimeter, check the radio towers, though they can't hunt for their own food any more, all the animals have gone missing, or died somewhere no one has been able to find them.

But on the bad days, when the wind throws whole clouds of white towards them it's like someone pushes their fingers into your head, blots whole parts of your mind out, makes them wrong.

Even on the worst days Jacob still sends men outside to be on watch. Though they can only stay in it two or three hours at best. Staci doesn't know what they're watching for. Who's going to be out in that? Maybe it's just to give them something to do. To make sure the routine stays the same, because the routine helps everyone. Without it, Staci thinks they'd just be roaming, naked, like animals.

But the pollen out there fucks with you. Pulls out all the parts of you that know how to do normal things, it eats away at the parts of you that know what's real.

Staci's been at the main entrance, dragging in men that got lost in the mess it, and some of them don't see Staci as a person at all, flailing at their fellow soldiers, or worse flatly refusing to come in, staying out in it, running away. At first Staci thinks he's not going to see those men again. That they're gone forever. But Jacob always goes out to look for them when the wind drops. He drags them back, raving mad or sobbing like children. He brings them inside and puts them in the rooms upstairs, until they slowly pull back some sort of sense. Staci knows Jacob would come for him as well, would drive out into the madness and find him and make sure the world didn't swallow him up.

How is he supposed to hate someone who would do that?

Even he gets caught in the worst of it once, and two hours outside is long enough for Staci to wake up in a strange bed, pressed into the uncomfortably hard curve of Jacob's body. Fingers numb, jaw aching like he'd been screaming. And at first he's confused, because the too-familiar silhouette of Jacob had always demanded obedience, and promised violence. Staci has never wanted to be hurt before, and doesn't know if he wants to be now. It's too much for his brain to process coming out of the worst the pollen has to offer. He clings tighter, apologises for things he's done, and for things he doesn't remember doing, but might have done anyway.

Jacob says his name, harsh but firm, tells him to stop. So he stops. 

There's a hand in Staci's hair, moving in long sweeps, like it's not sure what it's doing. Staci remembers that Jacob is fixing all of this, he's trying to hold them all together until this ends. Staci has to help him, has to make sure Jacob is strong.

"I'm going to make sure you're strong," Staci tells him. "I'm going to make sure nothing can hurt you."

Jacob's hand slows, then curves down Staci's face.

Staci wonders if Jacob wants his mouth on him again. Or whether that's just something Staci wants, even though Jacob has never been nice to him, and Staci thinks maybe he shouldn't let him. But Staci remembers the way it felt, the way Jacob had felt pushing into him. It hadn't felt entirely safe, or kind, but it'd still made everything inside him clench up with need, sharper and thicker than he'd felt for years. He'd gone back to his room, pushed his hand down his pants and touched himself thinking about it. 

"Do you want my mouth again?" Staci asks. 

Jacob makes a thick noise in his throat, that drags and drags, and it means yes, even if he won't say it.

 

~

 

Jacob tries to contact Joseph on the radio, tries to contact John, or Faith.

But Staci's heard the kind of broadcasts that are going off now. This craziness is everywhere, it's gripped hold of everyone, and there's no sign of any help coming from anywhere. Staci doesn't even know if Jacob wants any help. He was trying to claim the county with Joseph and John and Faith. Staci was trying to stop him. But then he wasn't. He doesn't know what's happening now. He doesn't know who the county belongs to, or where any of his friends are. 

He thinks Rook will probably be fine. He can't imagine anything managing to kill him, and he's always been good at getting things done. But Staci supposes that depends on what Rook is trying to get done. He watched one of Jacob's men spend an entire day carefully tearing the hotel guestbook into tiny pieces, and Staci's not sure he even had a reason. Hudson is still with John, Staci thinks, that's the last thing he heard. The last thing he saw on that video John Seed sent out. But Staci knows John Seed can't be trusted to take care of anyone. The Sheriff is...Staci doesn't know, somewhere out there, which he doesn't like thinking about.

John and Joseph and Faith are probably all dead now, because Staci can't imagine them lasting very long out there, with their grip on sanity already kind of out of whack. He thinks the pollen would just claw out everything they had left.

Jacob talks to Joseph sometimes, when there's no one around. So either he's seeing his brother, or Joseph is dead and his ghost is in the hotel.

Staci is hoping that it's just another hallucination.

There are no ghosts here.

God wouldn't be that cruel.

 

~

 

Staci goes to Jacob's room when it's dark. Jacob still hasn't told him not to, which is as close to being allowed as makes no difference.

Jacob is sitting in the chair by the bed, and it's only just light enough for Staci to see him. But he has his sleeves rolled up, scratches and raw red marks more than visible. But there are no new ones. Staci checks, he touches the skin, strokes the long lines of it in case there are wounds his brain doesn't see.

Until Jacob takes hold of his hand, makes him stop.

"You don't have to keep coming to check on me," Jacob says roughly. "It's not your job."

Staci frowns, because he'd thought that was what he was here for, what he was supposed to do now. A task Jacob had set him to without actually telling him. A test of some sort, because Jacob had a lot of those. But Staci hadn't minded this one.

"Who else will?" Staci says. "I don't want you to hurt yourself when no one's here."

Jacob doesn't release him, he doesn't tell Staci to leave.

"You shouldn't keep coming back here," Jacob tells him. "You shouldn't keep letting me do this."

That makes Staci frown, because sometimes this is the only thing that stops the days melting together. The only time he doesn't feel on the edge of some huge drop, counting things over and over to make sure they're all real. This is the place that had felt strangely safe. The warm quiet of Jacob's room, and his hands in Staci's hair.

He can't say all of that, doesn't know how to right now, so he just tightens his grip on Jacob.

"Don't send me away," he says, and it comes out angrier than he means. "I won't go."

Jacob coaxes Staci closer, large hands on his belt, drawing it free and leaving it to drop, and then his pants are slid down his legs and off. Staci doesn't think Jacob wants him on his knees tonight.

"You have no idea what you're fucking doing. I want to ruin you, you know that?"

Jacob is more efficient with Staci's clothes than he's ever been with them himself. Until he's a long line of skin, exposed for Jacob's attention. Jacob touches him, frowning at first, but then just muttering his name and gripping him, like he can't help himself. He pulls Staci down to kiss him, and it's strange to be naked against Jacob, who's all buttoned up and perfect. Jacob must think so too because he's trying to struggle out of his clothes while Staci kisses him, though he keeps stopping to grasp Staci's waist and hiss curses into his mouth.

Jacob pushes him up in one movement, walks him backwards to the bed and presses him into it. He rolls Staci over, so he can't kiss Jacob any more, so he's breathing into the pillow. Jacob makes a space for himself behind him.

"You're going to let me fuck you," Jacob shakes out. Somewhere between demand and question. Staci can't tell, but he's warm, skin tight wherever Jacob touches, cock half hard underneath him. Because Jacob's voice is rough and deep, and Staci can almost feel it touching him.

He nods, nods again, desperate. "Yeah."

Jacob spits in his hand and spreads Staci open, fingers easing into him, one stretching slide and then another, more after, tight enough that Staci makes a shaky noise that just gets Jacob in closer. Staci gets lost under the rough, impatient pushes. He's so lost that he barely registers Jacob pulling him up to his knees, curving into him, all hot skin and hard line of cock. Jacob holds him still, presses in, _pushes_ in where he's stretched Staci open.

Staci's body protests, needles at him to make this stop, or slow it down. Because this is just letting Jacob hurt him again, in a different way, a strangely intimate way that makes him tangled up and uncertain inside. When Jacob pushes deeper, Staci moans something low and hurt, but it doesn't sound like pain. Or maybe it's a sound for when pain isn't all there is, for when there are other things curled around it which make it ok. Staci likes it more than he understands or expected to, nerves all dragged tight, too full, too sensitive to every stinging push.

Jacob grips tight at the narrow edges of his hips, and then pushes into him, again and again. There's so much of it, too much, all movement and force and Staci feels broken open and raw. Like Jacob's making him something he can use.

He wants that, fuck, wants that so much he can't breathe. He wants to touch himself, wants to push a hand down and grip himself tightly. But he's only just holding himself up like this. Jacob's muttering is slurred now, heavy and slow, and Staci can hear his own name there, not sharp like he's used to but soft. As if Jacob thinks Staci can help him.

Jacob's not calm, he's not quiet, but it's a different sort of chaos inside him now, and he's going to leave all of that inside Staci, he's going to let it pour out of him. Staci is going to fix Jacob, and Jacob is going to keep them safe.

"Leave it all inside me," Staci tells him, quiet, because he wants Jacob to.

Jacob gives a low, desperate groan that doesn't sound like him at all. He shoves in tight and close, fingers digging hard into Staci's waist. Staci can feel him coming, can feel how much he made Jacob want this, which leaves him moaning wetly into his own arm and pushing back into it. Jacob holds him there, like he's worried Staci will try and get away. But Staci can't, he can't because Jacob needs him.

Jacob says his name, eases out of him, but Staci can't find any words yet, almost annoyed at the way the other man pulls at him as if he thinks he might have broken him.

"I'm not broken," Staci manages.

Jacob grunts and twists him over, gets big hands on him, fingers sliding and pushing, where Staci still feels open and uncomfortable, but then the hands move higher, over the line of his cock, touching him in slow pulls. Staci's not expecting it, a twist of pleasure low in his gut that makes his legs ease open, give Jacob's arm more room to work.

"Please."

Staci tries to find somewhere on Jacob to grab hold of, to touch, but it's all moving. 

He can't, he can't -

He comes over Jacob's fingers, the length of his wrist, the muscle of his arm. Which feels like something Jacob shouldn't allow, that Staci will be punished for. Part of him wants that, wants Jacob to scold him, to pin him down and bruise him.

Push into him again -

Make Staci feel it -

Instead Jacob wipes his hand on the sheet and lays next to him, hot and strangely close. Until everything is quiet and Staci can hear the slow clatter of people moving past outside.

"I can't get them out from under my fucking skin," Jacob says. He sounds tired, like he's all fought out for one day. "It's worse at night, they start digging and I can hear them, and there's nothing to do. My head won't let me sleep until I dig at them -" He drags Staci closer. "I don't know why you keep fucking coming here. I don't know if your head is the same as mine. If you know what you're doing. I don't fucking know what I'm doing. I should send you away. I shouldn't be - I tell myself I won't and then they start eating me alive again, chewing through me, and you're always looking at me, like you're just waiting for me to say yes."

Staci turns, so he's half curled over Jacob, holds his arms down.

"Sometimes you need someone to tell you that there's nothing there. It's all in your head. The things are in my head too. When you know they're not real it's easier, it gets easier. But I'm going to come back, and I won't let them hurt you." He won't, because they need Jacob, because Jacob is his responsibility, Jacob is his. 

Jacob grunts, one hand finding its way into Staci's hair, closing tight enough that it hurts, briefly, a flare of pain that's gone just as quickly, leaving something warm behind.

"Tell me that when I wake up," Jacob says quietly. "Keep telling me."

Staci can do that.


	8. All The Way To The Bottom

Faith is not a great deal of help when it comes to marking down the fields of Bliss. She just keeps insisting that it's everywhere and then tries to draw flowers over all the buildings on Rook's map. Technically, Rook supposes, she's right, the Bliss is everywhere. That's exactly the problem. He can't believe there aren't more detailed plans on the parts of the county it's growing in, about possibly infected areas.

"She just kept fucking planting it," Jacob mutters, when Rook voices the thought. "Faith never met a plan she could stick to. Always trying to go above and beyond, trying to be clever, trying to _impress_."

Still, Rook can't put this all on Faith. For all that she's a manipulative disaster who's been drugging and controlling the population. He doesn't think sending the entire county and her own family mad was on her list of preferred outcomes. He has to wonder if she's going to be punished when all this is done though. If Joseph is going to lay this whole mess on her head. He doesn't know how he feels about that. Honestly, he doesn't know how any of this is going to go when everyone comes down. They're so tangled up in each other's messes now that he's not sure there's any way they all get away clean.

Joseph curves in behind him, hands on Rook's waist when he leans, and Rook's getting so used to it that he doesn't even stop him, doesn't think to stop him, until the other man is a comfortable weight against his back. By then it feels too late to object. By then Joseph is just familiar warmth, awkwardly eyeing the map over his shoulder.

"You're going to stay here," Rook tells him.

Joseph looks at him from far too close, eyes like splintered glass. His fingers slowly dig into Rook's waist.

"I will not be abandoned, and if you even think of leaving me behind I will make you regret it. The sermons will be long, and sharply painful. I would make you beg for my forgiveness. "

Rook turns into him, he's smiling and he can't help it. He's honestly not sure whether that was supposed to be threatening or flirtatious - and some traitorous part of Rook doesn't mind if it was meant to be both. He has a hand on Joseph's wrist, and they're curved against each other in a way that is far past familiar.

Rook should probably fix that.

"Is that a no?" he asks instead.

Joseph grumbles something unhappy, as if he dislikes the shade of amusement and teasing behind the words.

"You really want to be out there in that mess?" Rook says seriously. "We don't know what the heat is going to do to the Bliss. It could make everything worse for a while. It could be the worst trip imaginable, and I know there are things in your head you don't want even close to real."

The brief tightening of Joseph's jaw is agreement enough to the truth of that. But there's still pressure, Joseph doesn't like people making decisions around him. He doesn't like not controlling what's going to happen, not knowing what's going to happen. Rook can't imagine Joseph gets left behind often, if ever. Maybe it's just as simple as that.

"John will be with you, Jacob as well." There's no judgment, or jealously there, it's just an observation, as if his brothers going with him means that Joseph is automatically allowed. If John and Jacob are needed then Joseph is needed also. Rook's not sure of a polite way to point out that the others are a good stretch more coherent than Joseph right now. 

"Joseph should come. It's important, he should be there," John agrees, which isn't helpful at all. But this is a family that's going to stick together it seems, through madness and mass crop burnings. No matter what the world throws at them. They've already proven that.

Rook sighs and tugs Joseph closer, lets him slip in beside him at the table, long hands laid next to his on the map.

"I vote we take out the closest fields first," Rook says. "If we can clear the area around the hotel maybe everyone will be a little more clear-headed. Which will help us in the long run."

"Might not help after all." Jacob jabs a finger on the map. "Wind's coming this way, and you've got the weight of the Bliss all the way down the river." Meaning even if they don't fuck up they might get buried in it anyway.

"But if we make it worse, if burning the pollen is a bad decision somehow, then we're close enough to get back inside, and we're not upwind of a vast quantity of Hope County citizens."

"We can't let a few civilian casualties stop us from following through on our mission," Jacob says.

"There will be no civilian casualties," Rook says, before anyone else can object.

"I'm not the one that's killing these people." Jacob's voice is tight. "They're starving to death sitting in their own fully stocked kitchens, they're walking into the woods, and sitting down on the roads. They're being eaten by the things they think are under their own skin, crawling there, eating away at them, piece by piece, and you can't cut them out no matter how hard you try. No matter how deep you go they just _burrow_ deeper - 

Jacob stops talking, he's shaking where he's leant over the map, eyes wide, throat flexing like he can't swallow properly, jaw clamped tightly shut. The whole room contracts into something that promises some flavour of violence, and Rook knows that everyone can feel it.

Pratt moves quietly in behind Jacob, puts careful hands on him. The table squeaks under the push of his fingers.

"There's nothing there," Pratt says quietly. "The Bliss is testing you, there's nothing there."

Jacob exhales, loud and rough, and Rook hadn't even noticed he was holding his breath. But then he just takes another, raspy-thin, eyes not looking at any of them. Rook's not sure he even knows they're there any more.

"I'll show you," Pratt says, and Rook watches his hand carefully slide up Jacob's arm, press in where it's tense. He tries to coax him into movement. "I'll show you that there's nothing there. Don't I always show you?"

Jacob turns into him, nods stiffly, and then drags Pratt out of the room. 

They're all left staring at the half crumpled map. At the chair Jacob tipped over in his hurry to leave.

Rook stops Faith from drawing flowers all over the river. Joseph's hand is clenching and relaxing on Rook's wrist, and Rook understands that he's worried about his brother.

He knows damn well that they're running out of time. People can't function like this.

 

~

 

_When Rook wakes up John Seed is watching him, his bare masterwork torso braced awkwardly over him. His eyes are so pale, they should look cold but they don't._

_"Where's Joseph?" Rook asks, because the space on the other side of him is empty._

_"Writing his sermon," John tells him. "He likes the morning. It makes him feel things, makes him feel closer to God."_

_Rook worries, absently, because there are bears out there. Or maybe they're further North. He can't quite remember. He hasn't seen any bears recently, but he remembers that they're out there._

_"I'm here though," John says, like that's important, and then lowers his weight onto Rook's chest, kisses him._

_Rook pushes his fingers into John's hair. Which is sleek and soft where it's fallen down._

_John lets his thighs spread around Rook's waist, a crush of weight that has Rook sliding his hands round John's bare thighs and pinning him still, enjoying the slow shift of his hips. His thighs hold more unpainted skin than the rest of him. But almost the same amount of scars._

_"Tell me what you want," John says, quiet and flirtatious. "Anything you want."_

_"Hmm?"_

_"You could handcuff me, if you want, Joseph kept them somewhere. I could find them. Would you like that?"_

_Rook thinks about it for a minute, thinks about whether he would like that. He might, he's never done it before. There are a lot of things he's never done before. A lot of things he's been afraid to do, the people he's dated have all been small compared to him and he's been afraid to ask for things. To wants things._

_John draws one of Rook's hands to his chest, pushes the fingers up until they curl loosely round his throat._

_"Do you want to hurt me? We could pretend. You could hurt me, and I'll pretend I don't like it. I could pretend I don't want it at all. Or you could use my knife, make your own marks on me. Whatever words you like, I'll let you choose."_

_"Do you want that?" Rook asks, confused. Because there are so many things now that John might want. There are so many things to think about, all running into each other._

_"It doesn't matter what I want," John says, frustration creeping in._

_Rook frowns up at him, because he's been enjoying finding out what John wants, what pulls the best sounds out of him, what makes him tense and grip and laugh into Rook's mouth. He thought John was enjoying that too._

_"Tell me what you want from me," John says, and he sounds quietly desperate now, something thin and confused in his voice. "Because I don't know. I want to give you what you want, but I don't know what that is."_

_Rook doesn't answer him, he spreads the hand John left at his neck on his chest and feels the thud of John's heartbeat under tattoos, under the scratched, torn edges of words, where he's warm and alive. He follows the lines and the curves, the raised edges of scars. Until John relaxes under his hand, until there's just the soft flare of his breathing and the slow rolling push of his hips. He touches him until John's eyes are warm again._

_Until he breathes out Rook's name._

_Rook likes John's mouth, the secret hidden curve of it, all white teeth and soft-harsh edges. He touches it, and John sighs against his fingers, leans into them._

_"Do you want me -"_

_"Yes," Rook says, because that's the question he knows how to answer. He wants everything John Seed wants to give him._

_He pulls John's mouth closer, until he's sighing warmth into Rook's own, laughing and pressing kisses whenever his mouth is shut. And then John's slithering down, pieces of his laughter curling against the long plane of his stomach, the flushed, heavy weight of his cock. He watches John's mouth open all the way, red and wet and beautiful. He tells him as much, because John deserves to know._

 

~

 

They decide to start the burn close to the hotel. Though not close enough to risk setting it on fire, to risk burning foliage blowing against anything they're going to need. Still, it bothers Rook, the sheer quantity of what they're planning to set on fire. Without any sort of plan, or expertise.

"I wish we could see where the wind is taking this, whether it burns out before it reaches any buildings." He doesn't want to set the whole county on fire. 

"I could do it from the air," John suggests. He's leant against the fence next to him, while he struggles his way into his gear. It's the biggest Jacob could find but it still doesn't quite fit him, also it was made for someone significantly more rounded.

Rook has to laugh, because he's not even going to pretend to seriously consider that.

"Honestly, of all the people I think could actually fly a plane while high, you qualify, John. But I also know that Joseph is not letting you up in a plane right now."

"He wouldn't have to know," John says softly. He looks over, at where Joseph is sitting on the truck, filling in pages in his book. Every so often he'll lift his head, stare at Rook, at the motion and intensity going on around him. There'll be a frown, a strange and conflicted twitch of movement. It's like he wants to be in charge but doesn't remember how.

"He'd know," Rook says, and he has no doubt about that. He'd know, if not now, definitely later. "Joseph knows everything."

"I know," John says. "It's disturbing how he does that. Though it does mean he's there when you need him. And when you'd rather you didn't need him." John sighs like there's history behind that. But then he tips his head at Rook, smiles amusement at his outfit, and his awkwardly held flamethrower. "Well, I guess you have to go set stuff on fire."

"I love that everyone trusts me to do that, even though I've never used a flamethrower in my life." Rook would feel better about this if half the volunteers weren't talking to people who aren't there. Jacob's idea of lucid and coherent is a little wider than Rook was hoping for. But maybe he should be happy that he's not doing this all by himself.

John drags the goggles down over Rook's eyes.

"You'll be amazing, it will be a thing of beauty."

"I shall be happy if nothing explodes," Rook says, and hikes the damp cloth up over the lower half of his face.

"You're going to love it," John assures him. "And I'll keep you safe."

Rook never would have imagined he'd actually trust those words coming from John Seed.

He ignites his thrower. 

The fields stretch on for a distance, Bliss bobbing in the breeze and spewing pollen every time they bounce against each other. Rook figures that the best thing to do is start at the front of a row, away from the wind so he doesn't get a face full and walk back in slow sweeps, so the fire doesn't block him in. He just wants to avoid the pollen, and the fire, and the pollen that's on fire, and it will all be good.

He looks up, checks on Jacob's men, picking other fields, checking the wind. There are spotters stood around to make sure no one gets caught in the flames, and Jacob's here somewhere too, fuel strapped to his back like the man's determined to show the insects inside his skin that they cannot beat him. Rook had expected Jacob to delegate, but he figures the man doesn't trust people easily at the best of time. This is by no means the best of times. Rook would probably respect him more if he wasn't afraid of all the things he's proven himself capable of.

They all head North, burning as they go. It's relentless and exhausting, and Rook has to replace his fuel more times than he can count. He's too hot, the world smells like charring and caramel, sickly sweet.

Men are replaced, over and over. Until there aren't any left. None that can be trusted to use a flamethrower. None that can be trusted not to go mad and start burning things which aren't there. Or worse, people who are.

Until it's just him, and Jacob, and one other man lighting up the Bliss, and Rook can't even tell them apart any more. They're just bulky shapes in the distance. Half the Bliss from the mountains to the Henbane is on fire. The sky is grey and black with smoke, spotted red with burning flowers.

Rook's dizzy but he keeps going. 

He keeps going.

For _hours_.

There's so much fire.

It's like the whole world is ablaze, he might as well be swallowing it, until it fills him, and he's going to split, to split like fruit, leaking fire.

Leaking fire -

Fire -

 

~

 

Rook's underwater.

Pushed under a spray that's too cold, that feels like it's freezing him alive.

He tries to pull out of it, instinctively.

"No, Rook, no - tell him to stop, you have to make him stop. I can't _hold_ him."

Rook hits a wall with a knee, hits flesh with an elbow and hears a deep noise of pain.

"Joseph, stop staring and fucking help me -"

John.

Rook focuses all at once, everything is too bright and too loud. Water is pouring over him, hair a slick point down his face. He can taste charring and honey.

John Seed is a long, wet, naked line beside him, sharp fingers dragging at his shirt, yanking it down his shoulders. Colours are spilled all over him, sliding and melting into each other, the only solid thing about him is the white of his smile. Closing his eyes doesn't help, makes it worse. Rook tries to make it stop, tries to put them back, to hold them closed. Until John moves his hands away.

Joseph is suddenly there, pushing his head under the spray, dragging hands through his hair, and the water is all swirls of yellow-white and inky black. Rook wonders if the black is coming from John. 

"John, I'm sorry, I can't stop it," he hears himself say faintly. But John shushes him, voice a curl of soft and warm. He holds Rook against the wall, which is cold, cold enough to dig icy lines under the skin, while hands pull at his belt and pants, stripping them free. "It's all spilling out."

Joseph says his name, not the second part, the first. Soft like he doesn't know how to cope with this but he's willing to try his best. 

Rook feels like he's going mad, sickly, desperately mad, like he's being pushed there by his eyes and he can't stop it.

John holds him up, which should be impossible because Rook is enormous and no one ever, ever holds him up. No one has _ever_. 

"I'm seeing things, Joseph," John says, like he wants Joseph to help him. 

Joseph makes an angry noise of his own, and Rook knows that no one in this room is right. They're all wrong. Rook has made everything worse. None of them can breathe. But if Rook can get it out of him, if Rook can pull this madness out of himself, then he can help. He can help them both. He can help everyone, if John just slices this part of him free. He knows John can do it, John cuts into people and takes parts of them away.

"John, you have to cut it out of me, you have to dig it out." Rook reaches for John's hands, marked like they know how. He pulls them to his chest, presses them down over the wet skin.

"Hey, there's nothing in you." John's voice sounds shaky, taut with something pained and ugly. "Don't...there's nothing. There's nothing in you." 

"Cut it free and I can help everyone. Cut the madness out. Joseph, tell John he needs to do it. Tell him to do it, Joseph."

"Make him stop," Joseph says. He sounds faraway, thready and nauseous. 

Rook needs to be himself again. He needs to _fix_ this.

"Cut it free, I can't think with it inside me. I need you to do that. Cut it out."

There's nothing sharp in here. If Rook had something sharp he could give it to John. He could make him see that this is the only way to _fix_ everything.

"You have to cut bits out of me," Rook says, voice gone deep and strange.

"Don't say that, don't make me do that, please," John says thickly. "I don't want to."

Rook's falling, he's falling and there's too much of him to hold this time. He's going to fall all the way and keep falling. He takes John down with him, landing hard on the cold tiles. He's on the floor, he's on the floor and he's still falling.

Joseph presses his forehead against the side of Rook's. A solid line of weight that Rook tries to pull closer, the entire hold feels like a bruise. John is on his other side, half on his legs, one hand pressed hard to the centre of his chest.

Rook is still falling, but he won't fall through the ground. 

They won't let him.


	9. A Man Of Faith

Rook doesn't wake up easy. It's more a series of uncomfortable jolts from his subconscious, like he's being shocked back to life.

His head hurts, his body hurts, he's too heavy to hold himself up, which makes no sense because he's lying down. But he can't describe it any other way. He's not sure he can move. He may have lost the ability to move. There's a long weight against his left side, and a press of heat to the right. For some reason he knows without looking that the left is John and the right is Joseph. He doesn't know _how_ he knows that. There's no way he's slept with the both of them often enough for it to be familiar. 

Fuck, he hopes he hasn't.

He drags his watch in front of his face, blinks until it comes into focus. No, it's just the next morning. It's been eleven hours. He's just been asleep, mostly asleep - he knows for a fact he spent a while raving about things spilling out of him.

They're all on the floor together, a complicated mess of sheets and pillows and naked skin. Some genius decided to just pull all the bedding down and make one of their own. Which is the reason they all fit together without anyone falling off. In a way they absolutely shouldn't, in a way that Rook needs to stop letting happen.

He knows for a fact that he broke his firm promise to not have sex with them any more. Because there are slashes of memory this time, pieces that match the echoes and aches in his body, in a way that he can't just pass off as dreams. Of having John under him, fingers digging into his waist in steady pulls, of having Joseph pressed tight into his back, whispering madness against the curve of his neck while he pushed into him, in desperate, uncoordinated movements. Of Rook dragging someone in, begging over and over, stretched open and pinned down. Waves crashing over him, and over him until he was underwater, but the water was cool and everything was fine.

This doesn't count. Though it feels like Rook is relegating a lot of his life lately to things which don't count, things which shouldn't have happened, that he's pretending didn't happen. Somewhere along the way he lost track of what he even wanted, what he was supposed to want, what he's allowed to want. 

He doesn't think he's allowed to want this.

His head hurts too much to think about it right now though.

A hand touches his face, fingers on his jaw, turning him sideways so John can kiss him. It's lazy and half-asleep, and it's also messy because John is trying to smile while it happens.

"Do you feel better now?" John asks. He fell asleep on wet hair, and it's kind of a disaster, which part of Rook feels like he should fix. But he looks genuinely happy to see Rook's grumpy, confused face. It makes him sort of wonder what his own face looked like before. If the sight of John had pleased him as well. He feels like a lot of things had made him happy while he was under the Bliss. He thinks it was probably nice.

Rook nods carefully at him though, because he does feel better now he's not going completely insane. That's always a good start to the day, checking off the 'not going insane' box. 

"I feel like shit, but I can't taste Bliss any more, and all of my limbs seem to work." He's moving now, so it seems a safe conclusion.

John laughs and draws him closer, and Rook finds his own hand spread between tattoos and scars. There's a bruise on John's chest, a bruise that Rook knows he put there. He touches it, gently, then flattens his hand over it, hides it from view.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. Because Rook doesn't want to be someone who hurts people he - he tries not to hurt people. "I remember when that happened. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's fine," John says, amused like Rook is fussing over nothing. "I've had worse."

Which is not the point, at all. Rook slides his hand back and forth over it, feeling John's warmth, until he realises what he's doing, makes himself stop.

"We should wake Joseph," he says instead.

"I'm awake," Joseph's sitting up beside them now. He has his new Book of Joseph open on one bent knee, sheet left to drop behind him. He's writing on an empty page.

"Are you going to write about my terrible, drug-induced breakdown?" Rook asks. Though he already knows the answer to that.

Joseph stops, frowns, and considers the page. As if it had never occurred to him that there might be things Rook didn't want him to write down.

Rook waves at the book and sighs.

"No, it's fine, go ahead. You've put everything else in there." It's not like anyone else will ever make any sense out of it anyway.

But Joseph sets the book to one side instead, turns to the both of them. He finds Rook's hand in the sheet and lays both of his over it. He makes Rook look at him.

"I watched you suffer, and did nothing," Joseph says simply, and there's a thickness of anger there, as if he thinks he deserves to be punished for it. 

Rook can't help but feel that Joseph has watched a lot of people suffer and done nothing, worse than nothing, he's helped some of them along. Rook can't tell if he doesn't remember, or if the fact that he thought he was purging them of their sins, or protecting his flock, made it all ok. And maybe he does deserve to be punished for those things, for the things he did willingly, for the people he left broken and dependent on him. But this one actually isn't his fault, Rook doesn't think he deserves to be punished for this. 

But it's John who tucks in behind Joseph, threads bare arms underneath his brother's and shushes him.

"Rook doesn't blame you, the Bliss makes everything difficult, remember. It makes everything slow and heavy and confusing. You were there for him, and Rook didn't go mad, and no one had anything dug out of them." The last part makes John squeeze, fingers going white on Joseph's skin, though Joseph doesn't complain. He just lays a hand on John's forearm. "You always come for us eventually."

Which Rook supposes is true, in a terrifying sort of way, that leads to unbelievable levels of fire and destruction. Joseph's need to bring broken people together just made sure all those broken people were in one place, and at the end of the day, all that situation had really needed was a spark. Rook has to wonder, now he's spent so much time around them, whether it was ever a possibility they could have found some sort of stability in each other instead. Or if bringing them all together was always going to end like this.

John nudges Rook with an elbow, and Rook knows what he wants. He's been neck deep in this for days, but now it honestly feels like he's been underwater for a while, and the only person who hasn't noticed is him. 

He lays a hand on Joseph's arm, curls it there, thumb dragging on the end of the word 'greed,' that's been crossed out with an angry thick line. He thinks he knows where a lot of that comes from now, understands that it's not something Joseph can stop. Rook knows that Joseph is finding this hard, is finding whatever is inside his head difficult to separate out right now. Rook wants to help him, but he's not sure that he can.

"John's right, I don't blame you," he says simply. Because he remembers, vividly, what going mad had felt like. "Because you were there, even though your head is a mess, you were there and you tried to help me. So, thank you, both of you, for keeping me together." This is the first time he's really meant it, that it hasn't been Rook saying what people needed to hear, to keep everyone moving, to stop people fighting. What he did to draw them all to this point so he could try and fix everything. He's just fucking grateful that the both of them had been there, that both of them are still here, giving everything to help him. God help him, he's underwater, and he doesn't have a clue how to get back up before he drowns. 

"We made vows," Joseph says quietly.

Rook nods agreement, they had indeed made very confusing vows to each other, while they were both high on hallucinogenic pollen. And Rook has no intention of holding Joseph to them when everyone comes down.

But for now - for right now - Rook pulls him in, he lets Joseph kiss him until the tension seeps out of him. Which Joseph seems to take as forgiveness.

He's still trying to decide what exactly he's going to do if this plan doesn't work. Because that will officially be him out of options. Is he supposed to leave the county and try to find help outside? Try and contact someone who knows how to deal with botanical hazards? The CDC? He doesn't fucking know? This wasn't covered in the manual. Rook thinks the Sheriff's department needs to print some new manuals. There are a lot of things his training has been unhelpful with so far.

The door bumping open knocks him out of his thoughts.

Faith is standing in the gap, holding a tray.

"Yes, everyone is awake. Are you better now? You look a lot better."

She kicks the door shut behind her and pads to the end of their sprawl of sheets and pillows.

"I made scrambled eggs." She holds up the tray so they can see. Faith did indeed make scrambled eggs, and they look perfectly edible, there are no pickles to be seen.

Joseph draws himself closer to Rook's side, and Rook pulls his legs up, leaving Faith a round space in the middle of the bed. Which she climbs into with a relieved and blinding smile. She sets everything out, with a very focused sort of enthusiasm which does briefly throw scrambled eggs in Rook's lap. But he forgives her. Her brothers seem to forgive her as well.

 

~

 

_Rook finds Faith at the top of the stairs, an entire floor past her dress, and seven steps past her underwear. She's balanced on one of the railings, watching the wind tug pollen back and forth. It's softer today, wispy and faint._

_"Joseph is looking for you," Rook tells her. "He wants you to get ready to go with John."_

_She tips back enough to see him and smiles, hair dangling almost to the floor_

_"Joseph always finds me," she says, then straightens and swings her legs. "He always finds you when you're lost, and sometimes it hurts, because you don't want to be found, you don't **deserve** to be found. But you should never be afraid."_

_Rook reaches out and holds onto her waist when she sways excitably, because he's afraid she'll fall. Faith just laughs and stops holding on entirely, relaxes into his grip._

_"I was afraid at first, because I couldn't make him do what I wanted, and he saw everything in me, things I didn't want anyone to see." Faith tips her head back until Rook can look down at her, and up close she has beautiful eyes. They all have beautiful eyes. He doesn't know why Joseph hides his. "But he showed me, he showed me what I could be."_

_She laughs, slips down off the railing, and reaches for his hand._

_Rook insists she put her dress on again first, because Joseph likes it better when she wears her dress to church._

_"But you can't make people love you." Faith pulls him along, feet picking specific places on the wood to tread, like she's trying not to step on any joins. "You can't, I've tried. You have to open your arms and let them come to you."_

_Rook makes a curious noise, because no one has ever told him that before._

_Faith swings into his path, making him stop and catch her, so they don't bump._

_"Sometimes even then they don't," Faith says, and picks up both of his hands and squeezes them, squeezes tightly. "But you did, you came to us, to all of us. You gathered us all."_

_Rook nods._

_"All of you," he agrees. He tips her face up, and her hair is silky-soft under his fingers. He likes to touch it, he likes when she leans over him and lets it trail across his skin in tickly lines. He likes the way she's always smiling, like she knows how everything ends._

_Her mouth is cool from outside, and it tastes of mint._

_"But people need to know you love them," Faith reminds him. She lays both hands on his chest. "They need to **know**. John especially, because so many people that were supposed to love him hurt him instead, and then he started hurting himself. And when you love him, but don't hurt him he gets confused, he gets confused because part of him thinks that's how it's supposed -" Faith stops, sighs like there's too much in her head to turn into words. "But he needs to be loved. So badly."_

_She shakes her head, looks lost for a second._

_"And Joseph, people worship Joseph, but not like you do. Not like you worship him, they don't love him like you do. Every part of him, even the ones that are broken, and he needs that. He needs that from you."_

_She lets her hands fall, then seems to change her mind and raises them all the way to his face, holding it tightly._

_"Which is why you have to stay, please stay. I know you didn't start with us, but we'll love you, we'll all love you when no one else does. That's what we do." Faith stops talking and sighs up at him, as if she doesn't know the right words._

_"I'm not going to leave," Rook promises. Which makes her smile and rise up on her toes so she can hug him, all warm arms, and softness and silky hair._

_Rook catches her fingers and starts walking again, takes her down the stairs._

_"I love you too," he says, in case Faith forgot about herself._

_She stops walking and makes a noise, and then another, it takes Rook a second to work out that she's crying. She's crying, and Rook doesn't know if he did that or not, if he made her sad somehow with something he said or did. He stops walking, and gathers her up, sits down with her on the floorboards, he lets her lean into him, and strokes her hair while she cries quietly into his chest._

_"I'm sorry," he says, just in case it was something he did. "I don't have any family. I don't know how to do this right." It just makes her cry harder, but she's stroking his hair too now, like she's trying to soothe him as well._

 

~

 

Rook's clothes are still wet, so he's left in the largest t-shirt Faith could find, and his boxers. He would normally feel weird about that, but he's seen people wandering the hotel naked, so he's going to choose not to give a shit, just for today.

It turns out that Rook wasn't the only one to suffer. Most of Jacob's men fared about as well or slightly worse. The men that were replaced never came back to replace the men after them, and there had never been that many volunteers with clear enough heads to start with. Some of them are still in the rooms upstairs, talking to themselves, worrying about fire. Rook thinks he was lucky that his overdose didn't send him right back into a week of madness again. He doesn't know how that happened exactly but he's going to choose to just be grateful for it.

He finds Pratt in the kitchen, when he goes there to look for some actual food.

There's a bruise on Pratt's jaw, a split in his lip. Which Rook considers from a distance. He feels guilty again, in a weird second-hand sort of way, because he remembers being the shifting fury, out of control. He remembers the bruise on John's chest.

Pratt catches him looking, pokes at his mouth.

"Jacob didn't want to shower the pollen off either, he thought there were insects in there as well, living under the tiles, that they'd get inside him. He's tried to dig them out of himself too many times already. I didn't want him to do it again." 

"I know what that feels like," Rook admits. "Like you're having a nightmare while you're awake."

"I made him do it," Pratt says simply. Something in him sounds surprised, and weirdly proud, as if he's still not sure how he managed to wrangle Jacob into some sort of obedience. And, yes, Rook has to give him that one.

"I know what that feels like too," he admits. "From both sides."

"He's in his room now, sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he talks to people who aren't there. I don't see people though, just things."

Rook has noticed that other people here tend to pull out chairs for Staci, as if to demonstrate that they're real. It's like everyone here is adapting to everyone else's personal madness. It's a strange thing to see from what Rook would have considered the most unsociable of all the peggies.

"Are you and Jacob - is that a thing you're ok with?" Because Rook feels like he has to ask.

Pratt looks confused, as if he's not sure what the question even means.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Rook remembers that space. Where everything feels normal until you come down and realise it never was. So he just shrugs.

"They told me you're going back out again today?" Pratt frowns at him.

"I have to, while I still can. There's less pollen in the air, I think it's working. I want to finish it."

"I'm not going to pretend I won't be relieved when I stop seeing things," Pratt admits. "I would think it's easy to tell when crazy things aren't real, impossible things. When it's normal things, chairs, mugs, doorways. There's no way to tell, no real way, except when things aren't there. If it stops - I won't have to count them any more, I guess."

Pratt scratches the side of his neck, where the skin is red, faintly scabbed. Rook's pretty sure that's a bitemark

"I have a headache on and off that won't go away," he adds, like he's never really thought about how the Bliss makes him feel before. "Everything seems a little further away than usual, in my head, and everything always tastes terrible. I want to be touched all the time - Jacob doesn't mind that one, which is good. It's only since he let me out of my room, he doesn't lock me in there any more. I spend the nights with him."

Rook doesn't think there's any way he can judge that, from either side, not with the unbelievable mess he's made, and not with Pratt still drunk on Bliss. He looks worn thin, like part of him close to the surface doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, but can't stop. Which is more than Rook ever had. Rook doesn't remember ever feeling like the things he was doing weren't exactly what he wanted at the time. He doesn't know what that says about him, about what he's comfortable with.

"I don't think it's safe out there though," Pratt finishes. "Not yet, not properly."

"It was never safe out there," Rook says, because that was true even before the Bliss went crazy. "No one thinks I should go. Joseph seems convinced that I'll get lost out there, so he's especially unhappy."

"What's that like?" Pratt asks, and he seems genuinely curious. Which is understandable, since he only remembers the Joseph from before, who scared the shit out of everyone.

It's going to be difficult to go back to that, Rook's trying not to think about it too much.

"Yeah, he can still be kind of threatening, even like this. He does not enjoy being defied."

Pratt makes a considering noise.

"Maybe you should have sex with him before you go out. It might help."

Rook thinks about asking if that helps him. But it's probably best if he just leaves it alone. Instead he levers himself off the wall, because he needs to get out there now the sun's up.

"I hope Jacob feels better soon," Rook tells Pratt, and he doesn't realise it until he's halfway back to his room, but he'd actually meant it.

 

~

 

Rook finds his clothes, 

He takes John and Joseph back out with him. Because right now, at this moment in time, he trusts them more than anyone else to not to let him go mad again. Though the both of them seem to find nothing monumental and insane about his decision.

It's mostly just the top of the river and the long bend of the mountain now. But the fields are huge, flowers pressed tight against the rock. It wouldn't have been a full day's work, but this time it's just going to be him. He's already tired from yesterday and there's only so much fuel left, half the flamethrowers are broken, and the wind is more unpredictable today. He's just glad a group of Jacob's men went all along the Henbane yesterday. Though the water will probably be suspect for more than a few days.

Rook starts in the open, takes the last two fields before lunch, burns every nodding curve of white and leaves it to scatter and ash on the wind.

Then he moves towards the mountain, where some of the flowers have crept into the caves and pollinated there. Rook has visions of some grizzly, high on mutated Bliss, lunging at him from the dark, and it makes him extra cautious for an hour.

Sunset comes quicker than he would have liked, and he doesn't want to be here come full dark, but he doesn't want to rush either.

There's an old mine here, wooden bridge, walkways, ledges and leftover machinery dangling over the many entrances and exits. But Rook can't risk venturing in, there's too great a chance of abandoned dynamite, of bliss barrels around every corner, just waiting to explode in his face. He doesn't want to try this again while out of his mind. There's no one left and he wants to get all of it, every fucking bit. If he has to stay out here all night to do it he will.

There isn't just Bliss and dynamite inside though, there are bodies too, among the rocks and wood, half buried in the Bliss growing there, they're already being eaten away by insects and small animals. There are so many of them, lit up by the glow of the fire now, some piled together. Rook would move them, so maybe they can be identified, but they just don't have the time. The corpses are all angels by the look of them, they must have found their way into the mines and either suffocated or starved. They look days old now. Rook doesn't feel good about pulling flame over them, but there's so much Bliss growing around them he has no choice. The bodies crisp and blacken until there's almost nothing left. 

Eventually the the old mine collapses, wood falling in on itself, burning Bliss glowing red as it falls from blackened beam, to rock, to earth.

And that's when Rook hears someone calling his name. He turns off the flamethrower, tugs the wet cloth away from his mouth and turns around. Joseph has left the edge of the slope, feet bringing him close to Rook, where the air is hot and the Bliss is burning.

Rook pushes his flamethrower to one side and reaches for him.

"Hey," he says. "You can't be over here." He catches Joseph's arms, but he's not looking at Rook, he's watching half the county burn in the darkness. He's watching the old mine creak, and blacken, and slowly collapse upon itself, he's watching dead angels crisp in the heat. "Joseph?"

Joseph is watching a burning fleck of Bliss cool against his skin.

"This is the collapse," he says faintly, and his eyes are madness wide. Rook watches the reflection of burning flowers in his glasses. "This is what I saw."


	10. When The Smoke Clears

Ninety percent of the Bliss fields are now ashy, charred ruins. Stretching in some places as far as the eye can see. The pollen is dropping out of the air, burning and breaking apart on the wind that blows across the county, which is now smoky and grey. But it's free of yellow and white madness now. Which can't be anything other than an improvement.

Rook is fucking exhausted, he can taste burnt sugar in the back of his throat, and his eyes are gritty with smoke. There are red rings under them, from the heat of the flamethrowers, and the pinch of the goggles. He feels like he desperately needs to sleep for about a thousand years.

Instead he takes off the flamethrower, the backpack of fuel and the flame retardant jacket and pants, leaves it all dumped in the back of the truck.

Joseph is sitting on a broken fence. Even in the sunlight he looks hollowed out and cold, like someone had told him everything he believed in was a lie. Rook doesn't think he has enough of himself, of his real self, to process this properly right now. Rook sits next to him, carefully, feels the fence creak underneath him. He lets Joseph lean into him, takes as much of his weight as Joseph wants to give.

"When you reach the end and there's no path ahead of you, what do you do?" Joseph asks him. "When you have followed it because you believed, because you thought it was your test, your _purpose_."

Rook isn't sure what he can say to that. He's never had a purpose this big. A purpose you burned everything for and followed half a country away. A purpose that defined your whole life.

"Do you find a new path?" Joseph wonders. "Do you seek a new purpose? Or is your purpose done. Are you left alone, abandoned, when God is finished with you? Are you nothing but a tool he has used to reveal a larger truth. One that was never yours to see."

Rook isn't sure whether any answer he gives will help Joseph right now. 

"I don't know how to help you with this," he says quietly. "I don't know how you're going to deal with this when you come down." If Joseph even can deal with this, when the world is cold and hard and clear again. When all that fury and determination and pain has no direction. "I don't know what it's going to mean to you, when you've built everything around it." 

"I was protecting them from disaster, leading them to safety, ensuring that they would be welcome, that they would be clean." Joseph's voice is so many layers of confusion, it sounds lost.

"You won't be alone," Rook tells him. Because that's what he thinks Joseph needs the most right now. "Whatever the answer is, whatever you decide to do next, you'll still have John, and Jacob and Faith." If they're not all in separate jail cells at the end of this. "You brought your family back together for this, and even though it's over now your family's still here."

Joseph turns to him, frowning, fingers curled around the warm length of his arm. He's asking a question, but Rook pretends not to notice. He doesn't think it's a good time to admit that he's not going to be here. That Joseph probably won't want him here, when he's coherent enough to feel everything.

"They'll help you find the way, wherever it is. Hopefully not something violent and destructive this time. I don't know, maybe you could all try and take care of each other this time around." Because they've been stapling religion and purpose over the wounded, broken parts of themselves, never noticing that none of those wounds were healing.

Rook rubs a hand through his hair, which is sweaty and covered in ash.

"Just, maybe deal with your problems as a family, rather than starting your own religion and burning everything down. I am still technically a deputy."

Someone might still try and send Rook to arrest Joseph again. But he already knows he won't be able to do that. No matter which face Joseph is wearing. No matter how much trouble he gets in for it.

"You should trust your family more, let them be more than your Heralds, and your followers. They love you, crazy, violent madmen that you all are, they _love_ you and they came here for you, not for Eden's Gate. And that's something not everyone has."

Joseph sighs and turns Rook into him, hands on his face, mouth air-cool and firm.

"You're not supposed to kiss me any more," Rook tells him, but he doesn't pull out of his hands, he doesn't _stop_ him. Because he's fairly certain this is going to be the last time Joseph kisses him.

 

~

 

_There's more space in the bed, since John left to go into town. Not enough to roll, but there's never enough to roll, which Rook thinks he would like. He's never had a bed big enough to roll in._

_Faith had been rolling here earlier, trying to encourage him to lay down and roll with her, because she refuses to accept that Rook is too big to do things sometimes. But John took Faith with him, to church, to town, there are so many places to go here._

_Joseph is still here though, sheets wrapped around his legs in a way that's inefficient and doesn't cover anything. He's sleeping, hair pulled out of its neatness, and Rook wants to wake him. He always wants to wake him, and he always does eventually. Joseph will sigh and bite at him with words, and Rook will apologise with his mouth, but he won't use any words, and eventually Joseph will forgive him._

_He always forgives him._

_It takes a while to get to the forgiveness today. But Rook doesn't mind._

_Afterwards, Joseph is softer and quieter, leant against him, and he has one of his white books open on Rook's knee, blacking out passages and ringing others with intense concentration. Rook tips his head against his shoulder, and murmurs all the things he's never been good at saying against the warmth of his skin. Joseph's hand lifts and curves around his neck squeezes tightly. Voice whispery soft when he tells him that he does as well._

_Rook would like to stay and watch him, to see what the sermon will be today, judging by the meticulous ringing, it will be something about **love** and **faith** and **family**. Which suggests Faith had been reading over his shoulder too. But Rook needs something. Food or drink, or maybe something else, something more confusing. Something he has to go and find._

_He untangles himself and stands up._

_"Wait, I want to read this to you." Joseph reaches for Rook's arm and tries to draw him back down._

_"You can read to me when I get back," Rook tells him. He tucks Joseph's book under the bed, so Joseph can't mutilate all the passages while Rook is gone._

_They've left a trail of clothes the way they came, and Rook can't help wondering if he could dress in reverse, restart everything all over again. Undress and redress as many times as he needed just by going up and down the corridor._

_The air coming through the window is fresh and cool, and he stands in it for a minute._

_It's nice._

_He doesn't remember._

_He's not where he's supposed to be. He's not where he remembers being._

_He's standing barefoot and shirtless on a wooden floor -_

 

~

 

Rook falls asleep in a hotel armchair, halfway to his room. He's not sure exactly how long for, probably not long enough, because when he opens his eyes he's stiff and groggy, eyes sore inside his head. They probably dehydrated inside their sockets, even through the goggles.

He only wakes up because John sits down next to him. Judging by his slightly guilty expression he'd been tasked with bringing him a sandwich, but he's already eaten half of it. Rook decides to give him points anyway, because he thinks being John must be really fucking hard sometimes.

"I wasn't going to wake you, but you looked hungry. You looked hungry in your sleep." John seems to find that amusing. Rook's afraid to ask what exactly that had looked like, instead he takes the half a sandwich offered and eats it in two slow bites. He can't taste anything over burnt plants, and he doesn't even care. He can pretend it was delicious.

"I wouldn't have thought setting things on fire would be so tiring," Rook admits. That might be the most things anyone has ever set on fire. The most things ever set on fire in two days. Rook is like the anti-fireman, or the best arsonist ever - which makes him less happy, because he's a deputy and he'd hate to have to arrest himself. But the pollen is gone, it's all gone, the only thing in the wind out there is smoke and ashy bits of plant.

"You've officially set more things on fire than I ever did," John tells him. "So you'd know better."

"That is not a compliment, John Seed." And, also, setting things on fire hadn't really been John's speciality.

"Hmm, maybe not." John picks up Rook's wrist, turns the length of his arm so he can look at it.

"You should let me tattoo you again," he says. "You have so much skin, and it's all so empty."

"I think you've done enough damage to my skin already." Rook tells him, and tries not to think about what happened after John tattooed him the first time. When, by the look that John gives him, he's having trouble thinking about anything else.

"Joseph wanted that. He wanted you to match him, to have something on your skin, to look like you belonged."

Rook looks up at him, surprised. Because he hadn't known that, he'd just assumed it was a whim of John's. Joseph had never said anything.

"I would have liked to have given you something of mine too, if you wanted it. Or maybe something to commemorate this. A field of Bliss on fire." John smiles up at him. "I could do that?"

Rook isn't sure he wants to remember this whole business every time he looks at himself, even the end of it. Not to mention that giving John free rein over his skin once he has his mind back is an incredibly stupid idea. He will grudgingly admit though, that the man does good work. Even if Rook does now find himself with a huge cult tattoo he has to keep for the rest of his life. Which is going to be something of an adventure to explain.

John rubs his eyes.

"I'm going to be dreaming about fire all night," he complains. 

"I'm going to be smelling like it for longer," Rook points out. He feels like the smoke has seeped into him.

"You could shower," John suggests. He's smiling again, and Rook knows that smile, he's said no to it more times than he can count.

"You're not showering with me," Rook says. Even though he's tired enough to imagine it, and feel no shame at all. Because John has made him feel a lot of things in the last week or so, but none of them had been bad, none of them have been painful. He wants it, but he's not going to say yes. He doesn't have to say yes.

John laughs at whatever shows in his face, but lets it go anyway.

"Fine, then I'm sleeping," he stands up and stretches until his back clicks.

Rook groans jealousy because he wants to do that. He's just too lazy right now. 

John slides a hand through his dusty hair, tugs gently. Rook tips his head back to look at him, which John takes as an invitation to lean down and steal a kiss.

"Come slide in with me if you like, or wake me up before you have breakfast, we can all eat together."

Rook can't quite bring himself to tell John that he's leaving.

But it had to happen eventually.

 

~

 

He takes John's truck, because it's the only one already set to his frame. There are still three cereal bars inside it, that must have tumbled out of someone's pocket, or been secreted away by Faith.

Rook packs them away, tidies the rest of the car out. He finds three pairs of errant sunglasses, six empty wrappers, two hair ties, because the stupid things kept breaking every time he tried to do Joseph's hair. And finally John's keys, which he's always losing - Rook leaves them at the guard post.

In the back seat he finds the Book of Joseph. The one that Joseph has been writing for him. It must have fallen free when they brought him back out of his mind. Almost the entire thing is filled in now, not all in the same handwriting, or the same colour pen, or up the same way.

Around the writing there are drawings, doodles and sketches. Crammed in so tightly on some pages that they cover the paper entirely. There are planes, crows, flowers, wolverines, sketches of all of them together, sketches of them on their own, sketches of Rook flamethrowing Bliss fields, sketches of Joseph giving a sermon, of Jacob wrestling a wolf, of Faith with flowers in her hair. They go on and on.

Joseph has been adding sermons to the journal, and it's clear his moments of clarity have been varied. From full meandering thoughts on memory, and obedience, and faith - to more jagged efforts, lists really, of things Joseph wants Rook to remember, or try harder with. Mostly obedience and trust according to one very annoyed page, where it's repeated fifty seven times. It seems very insistent.

One page is just Rook's name, his full name, in Joseph's jagged handwriting, which Faith has decorated with blue flowers.

Towards the end there's even some strangely dour poetry, in a hand that Rook doesn't recognise, above what looks like a drawing of a tank, and the complimentary, if slightly sinister, outline of a deputy's badge. Rook huffs a laugh without meaning to.

There's not a single mention of Eden's Gate.

He flips through it for a long time, then tucks the book into the back of his jeans and pulls his shirt down over it. Joseph probably won't want it any more, and it was written for him after all. It was technically always his.

 

~

 

It's been three days since Rook was last in town. It looks much the same as he remembers, though the garbage is more pointed now. 

Grace has set up base in a house, and she lets Rook stay with her. And it's both a relief and a little weird to be around people that aren't constantly trying to have sex with him. She's still a little worried about the things in the trees getting down while she sleeps, but he promises he'll set up a few people to watch. One of those people turns out to be Hurk, who showed up with a broken arm two days after they'd left the first time, telling wild stories about living in the woods with Yetis, who foraged for him and taught him their language. Rook is pretty sure he just fetched up with a band of peggies, but Hurk is very insistent, so Rook doesn't push.

Rook really would like a doctor of some sort to show up, or a vet, a pharmacist, anyone with more medical knowledge than him.

He tries his best to fix the town radio, fielding confused and not always coherent calls from all over the place. He hears familiar voices that he'd been worried about, as well as some confused, stranded Peggies who don't seem to understand yet that they're on opposite sides. That they _were_ on opposite sides. Rook still doesn't know how that's going to work now.

He organises parties to go out with food and water and check house to house, radio tower to bunker, bridge to cave, looking or survivors, stranded townsfolk, people who are injured. It's mostly walking distance, but the radio helps. People come to the town, and Rook does his best to make sure it can cope with them when they do.

The air doesn't smell sweet any more, it's fresh where it comes in from the south, and the dizzy edge Rook gets when he spends too long outside isn't as sharp as it has been. He can take a deep breath now, without worrying about pollen getting inside his lungs.

He also discovers that one other person spent the entire disaster as clear-headed as him. Because Dutch locked himself in his bunker and refused to open the door, especially after some of the noises he'd heard over the radio. Rook isn't sure Dutch entirely believes him when he relays the whole story. But it doesn't matter in the end.

The tallest and heaviest people very slowly start to come out of the fog. Confused at first, and then less so. They join Rook in trying to fix the madness that stole everyone for nine days.

It's finished, it's finally over. Hope County is finally breathing again.


	11. After The Storm

It takes two days for everyone to come down.

Rook helps as much as he can, when the injured start to realise they're in pain, or bleeding, or worse infected, and all of those things seem more pressing than they had hours before. He tries to pull in the people who find clarity first, encourages them to help with clean-up, housing, water, food. It's a much bigger job as the net widens to include the rest of Hope County. People left in their homes for a week. People lost in the woods, hungry, confused, ashamed. Those who were smart enough, or stupid enough, to drink out of the river, are the ones that made it. A lot of people didn't.

The outside world starts sending people in pretty quickly after that.

The most surprising thing to come from that, is the fact that the cult's recent activities have officially been put down to 'biological contamination from a hazardous source.' Which a lot of people think is more than the Seeds getting off easy. It's sweeping the whole disaster under the rug and they all know it. Rook thinks people just don't want to believe things like Eden's Gate can happen. They need to pretend things like that can't happen, that people wouldn't _let_ them happen. Not to mention, magical plants that turn a whole town into power-hungry, violent, religious lunatics is a really good story for the papers. 

And, yes, most of the town is still angry that no one is being _punished_. After the torture, and the kidnappings, and the madness, and the fighting that left bodies across the county. But everyone has lost someone now. Everyone has experience doing what the things in their head tell them to do now, with wanting things that the real version of them would rather forget about, will have nightmares about going forward. It's all more complicated than anger now. 

Medical personnel have been moving in and out of the jail for days. No one knows for sure what went on in there. But Rook's heard the rumours, and even if he believed only half of them, it was apparently a horror show. Rook missed a lot of things that happened, and he could feel guilty about that, can wish he'd tried harder to find the people who relied on him. But in the end it's all over now.

A few people never came down from the Bliss, either because the dose was too big, or they were in it too long, or it was just a freak reaction they had. That's just where they live now. Burke, the Sheriff, Hurk's father, Tammy Barnes, and, according to rumours, Faith as well.

To be honest, Rook's pretty sick of trying to keep his head down, because that's more difficult for him than most people. But the Spread Eagle is fairly safe, Mary May has a policy of kicking reporters out. Even though there's still a temporary quarantine on the county, they keep sneaking through it. Though they don't get as many of them inside since she put the sign out front, saying they'll be fed to the bears. Rook's not really in the mood to get drunk, but sitting here with a beer is kind of nice.

The hand on his shoulder makes him turn, and he's surprised to see Pratt, who smiles and then waves Mary May down for a beer of his own.

"How are you doing, Rook?" Pratt is still thinner than he was before all this started, but the tear in his lip is mostly healed.

Rook considers it for a minute. Which is more than he's given a lot of people lately. He's gotten so used to just instinctively telling everyone he's fine. Maybe he's hoping eventually he'll believe it himself.

"I guess I'll do, what about you?"

Pratt just nods, awkwardly, which isn't really an answer, but Rook knows what he means.

They drink in silence for a while, talking about nothing, talking around everything else. But it's comfortable enough. It's easier talking to someone who was close enough to see the whole mess of it, even if they were neck deep in Bliss at the time.

"Are you sure you're ok?" Pratt says at last, when all the beer is gone.

"Yeah," Rook says, because he is, mostly, or he will be at some point. "Why?"

Pratt gives him a searching look, as if he's not sure whether to continue. Whether he should talk about everything they're carefully not saying.

"You spent the whole thing with Joseph and John Seed, and I know that people don't really worry about you, because you're huge and they think it - I don't fucking know - makes you immune to being hurt or something." Pratt scratches his neck awkwardly. "But after you burned the Bliss for the first time. When you came back and you weren't...yourself. I know what happened, most of it. I know that they stayed with you, that they both - umm, stayed with you."

Pratt stops talking, face conflicted. Which Rook feels bad about because whatever this fucked up thing has or hasn't done to him, Pratt doesn't deserve to feel any of it. He'd been all the way under, after all, and he has more than enough of his own shit to deal with. Rook sighs over his beer at him.

"Yeah," he says simply. "I was with them, both of them, out of my mind and not."

Pratt absorbs that bit of information with something like sympathy, his face is complicated, like he's about to suggest maybe Rook should talk to someone.

"Shit, Rook, I mean, I know how much the Bliss made you want things. Things that seemed normal and necessary, even when they were fucked up. Even when part of you still kind of knew that you shouldn't. And I can't imagine that Joseph - or John, was anything but -"

"It wasn't," Rook says, can't help but say. "It wasn't fucked up, not like that." That was part of the reason why it had been so hard to stop. 

Pratt looks him over for a long moment, then sighs and drags a hand through all of his hair.

"But it should have been, right? I mean these are people that have threatened us, and abused us, and fucked with our heads, they've killed people we know. But we still let them - we wanted them to -" 

Pratt scratches at his bottle, label peeling under his nails.

"I think I still do," he admits, soft and helpless. "Jesus, Rook, what the fuck is wrong with me?"

Rook looks at Pratt over his own beer.

"When I find out, I'll let you know," he says quietly. Because Staci deserves that much.

Pratt gives a strange little laugh, at what Rook has admitted to, at how the last few weeks has broken both of them, maybe irreparably.

"Man, this fucking county."

 

~

 

It's Rook's fault, honestly he deserves it, because part of him has gotten used to not having to worry about getting shot everywhere he goes. He's checking an abandoned house for bodies, which seems to be his secondary job now that manpower is so short, when someone shoots him with not one but _two_ fucking bliss bullets. Which seems like a dick move considering everything that's happened. But the world tilts alarmingly, before he's eating dirt.

He wakes up on the floor, tied to a pipe, in the same empty house he was rifling through. His face hurts like his entire body fell on it.

Sitting across from him, in a chair tilted into the streak of sun coming through the window, is John Seed.

Rook's body goes through a confusing series of reactions. As if it's lost all sense of who he should be afraid of. But he remembers well enough that John Seed, free of the Bliss's influence, is someone who probably should belong on that list. He remembers, but he's damned if he can make himself believe it.

The silence goes on for a long time, and Rook thinks he's not the only one who's confused about how exactly this is meant to go now. Of whether they are friends, or enemies, or ex-lovers, or some complicated fuck-up of all of those things. Still, Rook looks pointedly at the chair, which would have been significantly more comfortable.

"Please," John says smoothly. "It took three men to get you in a chair the first time. I'm not doing it on my own. Your dead weight is ridiculous." His admission that he's here by himself is...interesting.

John stands up and carries his chair all the way over to Rook, close enough that he could reach out and touch him, though he doesn't. He just looks at him, as if he doesn't know whether to hit him or kiss him, Rook gets the impression he kind of wants to do both. John looks sharper than Rook remembers, buttoned up tightly, everything about him aggressively neat, as if he wants everyone to know he's in control this time. Though he also looks thin, and tired. There's a bruise on the side of his face, curving around his left eye. Rook doesn't know how he got it, and it bothers him.

John watches him, expectant and a little angry. It's clear he wants some sort of reaction from him. When Rook doesn't give it to him, when he doesn't know what John wants or expects from him, John leans back, and sighs all the air out of his chest.

"Joseph's sermons are not going well lately," he says, and his tone is conversational, friendly, even if his new smile is brittle. "When he decides to give them at all. The last one ended when he threw the book at the wall and yelled at everyone to get out. That was something to see. Don't get me wrong, Joseph can be unnerving when he's focused, but this isn't that. Joseph is not focused right now. And I'm sure I don't have to tell you who's to blame for that, do I?"

Rook still isn't sure what John wants from him, an apology? Retribution? John certainly doesn't need an explanation, he was there for most of it. It's made a mess of all of them.

"I haven't come near Eden's Gate property," Rook says carefully. And the people who remain Eden's Gate faithful haven't come out of it. It's a tense détente that everyone is sticking to, and no one quite knows what to do with yet. Everyone is afraid to touch it, in case it somehow unfolds into violence again. "Since I don't want to get shot in the head." Because Rook had figured the least he could do was not be around, while everyone came to terms with what happened.

"You think we wanted to _kill_ you?" John sounds honestly surprised, he leans forward in the chair, frowning down at him, like that makes no sense at all. "Why would we do that?"

"We were fighting, we were on opposite sides before everything happened." John had tied him to a chair and threatened to torture him a week before the whole thing happened. What else was Rook supposed to think? "I couldn't just -" Rook stops frustrated. "I'm a deputy, and you were _killing_ people. You know why I had to leave."

"We expected you to come back," John says tightly. "Joseph was going to explain, he was going to _show_ you. We waited for you to come back."

"I don't belong to Eden's Gate," Rook reminds him. "I never did."

"No, you belonged to _us_ ," John says, angry now, like he doesn't understand how Rook doesn't know that. As if it was _obvious_ to everyone but him. 

But that's not true either, because nothing that happened in the Bliss was real. Rook still remembers thinking he had coils of fire inside him, tangling through his guts and splitting his skin open. He remembers what everything he believed in not being real felt like. No one was coherent enough to either know or care that they were supposed to be enemies, and Rook had known that couldn't last. He'd always known that couldn't last.

"You were out of your minds," he says. "Everyone was." 

"We were in love -" John snaps, then cuts himself off, eyes sharply accusing, like it was all Rook's fault. But then he just sags where he sits, drags a hand through his hair, knocking his sunglasses askew, and ruining it completely. 

The pipe clangs, sharply when Rook tries to reach out, without thinking, tries to touch him.

John doesn't miss the movement, because he's more perceptive than people give him credit for. It makes him sigh and take a knife out of his pocket. He unfolds it without a word, and then slowly slides it under the rope holding Rook to the pipe, slices through it in steady movements.

"I had purpose," he says firmly, eyes moving between Rook and the rope as he works."I had direction. I had _focus_. I knew what I was supposed to do. I was freeing people from their sins, purging weakness. I was making them clean. Joseph had shown me what God had planned for me, what I could do for my family. After everything they'd done for me -"

Rook wraps his newly free hand around the wrist holding the knife, the knife John is still gesturing aggressively with. John takes a breath, looks at the curl of Rook's fingers, and then slowly folds the knife shut. 

When Rook releases him, lets John's warm hand slide through his own, he slips it back into his pocket.

"You ruined all of that," John says simply. "You made everything feel easy, feel like something I could _have_."

Rook doesn't even know what to say to that. How to react to that slice of pain that John needs to share.

"I'm sorry -" he tries.

"Don't be sorry." John sounds furious now, teeth clenching, body taut with something that desperately wants an outlet for what he's feeling. "Don't you fucking dare be sorry. I will not be a _mistake_ -" John stops talking, bites down on whatever else he wanted to say. As if he came here and made Rook listen for a reason, and he's not going to let anything derail it.

He leans back in the chair until it creaks, and pastes a smile back on his face.

"Faith keeps asking where you are," he says carefully, and Rook's pretty sure John's trying to make him feel guilty now. When there's enough of that tangled up in him already. "She's very persistent."

"I'm sorry about what happened to her." Rook hadn't known Faith very well, before the Bliss. He only really remembers the version of her that was hair and smiles and pulling, excitable hands. Because she's John's sister, mostly his sister, and a version of her that he knew is gone forever.

John gives a strange, thin laugh.

"Faith gets to be happy all the time now," he says. Then he pulls a face, like he doesn't know whether to be upset or jealous over that. "Everything is still fine for her. Though she is now almost aggressively unwilling to do what she's told, and Joseph has been indulging her. Which I feel is going to end poorly." John pulls a face like he doesn't think that can end any other way. Which is funny considering Rook knows for a fact that Joseph has indulged his little brother more than a few times too.

John lowers a hand, holds it out to him. Rook takes it, pulls himself to his feet.

Then they're just standing too close together, looking at each other with a confused sort of uncertainty, as if they're both waiting for someone to tell them what's ok and what isn't. To tell them what they are to each other now, what they're allowed. Rook wishes someone would tell him, he really does. Because this isn't the way he thought this would go. For some reason he thought they'd slip back into their roles, that he'd have to face the John he remembered. Part of him had prepared for that, packing everything away so he could deal with it. He didn't expect this. He didn't expect John to still feel like John. For him to still feel like someone Rook's supposed to protect, that he's allowed to touch. He doesn't know what to do with this.

"Don't look at me like that," John tells him, but it's so soft, there's nothing behind it at all any more. "You always did that, like you wanted to fix everything. Some things are fine broken."

Rook doesn't even realise he's reached out again, until he has John's arm in his hand. Until John stills under the hold.

And then Rook can't think of a good way to let go.

Doesn't know how to let go.

Of anything.

But he's not the one that moves, he's not the one who shoves Rook into the wall, breathes into his mouth, and then covers it. And this is the John Seed that Rook isn't supposed to kiss. This is the John Seed who cuts people open and burns everything he touches. The one who's angry and sharp and destructive. But he feels almost exactly the same, and Rook will blame himself later, for threading fingers through his stupidly perfect, messed-up hair and tipping him into an angle that makes everything deeper and harder. Because this is the opposite of fixing everything and moving on. Exactly the opposite of that. John fists his hands in Rook's shirt and pins him still and his mouth is _desperate_. They're going to bruise each other, and part of Rook wants that because he wants to keep _something_.

John eventually draws back, and he doesn't look angry any more. He looks like Rook has broken him, and he doesn't even care. He unclenches his hands from Rook's shirt, pulls them away, though it's clear he doesn't want to.

Rook doesn't want him to.

"You have to fix this, you have to make -" The rest of that gets lodged somewhere in John's throat.

Rook opens his mouth, to say something, anything.

"Go and see him," John says flatly, and drags his sunglasses down, so Rook can't see his eyes any more. 

 

~

 

There are people who recognise Rook at the compound. They don't question him at the gate, or on the way to the church. No one tries to bar his way. No one stops him. Someone says his name, faintly surprised, as he passes by, though he doesn't see who. Rook spots Daniel loading boxes into a truck. Also, the crazy man who'd nearly drowned himself in a pool of Bliss. He seems to have made it through ok. He waves at Rook, cheerfully, as if he's still somewhere far away.

Rook finds Joseph in the church, he's a line of angry tension at the top of the steps. 

"I'm not in the mood for company," he says, when the door creaks open.

Even from this far away, half in shadow, there's no mistaking the fact that Joseph is back to himself again. He's wound tight now, almost aggressive in his stillness. And this feels more like a brittle, splintered reenactment of their first meeting, then any search for understanding or closure. But Rook hadn't realised how much he'd needed to see him again, until that exact moment. He keeps walking and Joseph turns, frowning, like he wants to know who would _defy_ him. 

When he sees Rook he blinks, surprised, and for an instant both versions of Joseph Seed are a complicated tangle in that Eden's Gate shaped hole of light. 

And Rook finds that he still wants to touch him, wants to reach out, suddenly and unhelpfully. Judging by the strange, aborted twitch of Joseph's hand, he's had the same thought. It's like their time inside the Bliss fucked with all their instinctive reactions to each other. But instead of listening to it, Joseph closes his hands, stamps down on it, dares Rook to come closer.

Which he does. Because there's really nowhere else to go. Rook's come for judgement, because he has to know how this ends. Though he doesn't know how to start, what to say to him. There's no warmth to Joseph any more, he feels sharper and colder, and much harder to read.

"John said you wanted to talk," Rook says. It's not exactly the truth, John had demanded that he come here. But John had never asked him for much, and he's already put it off too long.

"Do we have anything to talk about?" Joseph asks. "There is no longer a warrant out for my arrest. 'Authorities' have taken the last of the Bliss, and a significant portion of our property, and we are still under quarantine." Joseph scowls, which tells Rook how much he likes all of that. But he seems to have decided to take this unexpected reprieve as an opportunity to decide what exactly he wants to do next with Eden's Gate. "You have no official business here." The last few words are drawn out, a pronouncement. But all the softness is gone from Joseph's voice. He eyes Rook like he doesn't know what to do with him, like he doesn't know how to cope with what he represents.

"No," Rook agrees. "I have no official business here." Technically he's not even allowed to have any official business here, until all the microparticles are out of the air. "I came to see you."

John shouldn't have had to push him, he should have come sooner.

"I should have come sooner, I know, I'm sorry."

Joseph takes a breath and slowly lets it out. As if he'd expected conflict, not an apology. There's a moment of quiet, and Rook can see him trying to decide what to say next.

"I hoped that when you returned to us, I could convince you to join us, to be one of us," Joseph says quietly. "But then I realised that I already knew you well enough to know you would never agree. Not to what we were. I wanted to cleanse the world, to tear down its lies and its corruption and start anew. But you, you need to fix things, you need to hold broken things together until they stand on their own, or until there's nothing left to grab hold of."

Joseph comes down the steps, slowly devours the space between them.

"So then I decided that I would show you that the world did not deserve your efforts, did not deserve your determination, that it was a lost cause, only focused on watching itself rot. I would build a new purpose, a new journey, a new faithful, and you would be part of it. I wanted you to share my vision, to help me build it. The thought that you would not let me convince you was...troubling. But I was certain that you would give me time to, that I would make you see in the end. I had faith that you would listen."

Joseph stops, close enough to touch him, and Rook can see his fingers twisting in, resisting.

"But you did not come back," Joseph says simply. "You made your feelings clear. You made your _rejection_ of us clear."

Rook can finally read what's underneath all that brittle restraint now. It's all anger and hurt, like Rook took something from him that Joseph hadn't even known he needed. He doesn't think he would have seen that as easily if he didn't know exactly what it felt like.

"I didn't come back because I thought you would want me dead," Rook says quietly. "I didn't come back because we were fighting on opposite sides, tearing the county apart, and I had no reason to think you'd changed your mind. That things would be any different." He hadn't thought he could make them different by staying.

"You had every reason," Joseph's voice slides into something sharp. "I told you, over and over that you had always been welcome here, that there was always a place for you here. I told you that I would _forgive_ you, and you told me that you would _stay_."

That one is supposed to hurt, and it does. 

"You'd forgotten all of the rules you made," Rook points out. Because he remembers the rules. God, Eden's Gate had made so many of them. So many things that hadn't been allowed. "Or you didn't care, and I assumed when you eventually came down you'd be angry about breaking them all. Given the fact that every minute I spent with you was a sin of some sort."

"A sin," Joseph says slowly, as if was all going to come down to that in the end. When he has to remember as well as Rook does how many of them they had committed together. How many of the rules they had broken, over and over again. "As if I'm fit to judge, as if I am allowed to judge with the mistakes I've made. The collapse I had spent a lifetime afraid of, that I spent a lifetime preparing my family for has come and gone. It was a fire I set in motion myself. That I brought to all of us. I was told it would lead to ruin, and it did." 

Rook had noticed fewer followers outside, and more awkward, repentant townsfolk in Fall's End. Eden's Gate is thinning. He thinks there are only true believers left.

"But you, you told me to build something new in the ashes. To make something with my family, to make them my purpose. You took a world that made no sense, a world coming to pieces, and you dragged it together and _held_ it." Joseph's eyes aren't flat any longer, the sharpness isn't angry it's confused and hurt. "You held my family together. You became my family, and even after everything became clear again, after you failed to return to us, and I realised you did not want to be, I found it difficult to -" 

"Tear me out?" Rook suggests. Which hurts more than he expects, to put words to it. Though Rook had mostly ignored his own strange, uncomfortable longing, deemed it a problem he couldn't fix. A problem that couldn't be fixed.

There's a frown, immediate, like Joseph objects to his choice of phrasing.

"I never managed that," Joseph says quietly, like it's a weakness he will admit to. "You have always been persistent, and determined, and there was so much of you."

Rook exhales, because he supposes there is a lot of him to try and forget. 

"I didn't want to leave," he admits, finally. "But you were killing people. How was I supposed to let that go?"

Joseph doesn't say anything for a while, moves past him until he can see out of the church doors. To where the peggies outside have stopped working to watch them.

"We are - we are no longer forcing others to confront their sins. People must choose to walk the path. Their faith must still be tested, they must still atone, but they must ask for it."

"Open your arms and they'll come to you?" Rook asks, because he remembers almost everything now.

"Faith is strangely hard to deny now, isn't she?" Joseph agrees. "She has an honesty which is - I want to say admirable but she is far too fond of sharing other people's secrets."

And not wearing any clothes. But Rook doesn't think Joseph needs to be reminded of that.

"I am forgiving more things than I used to," Joseph adds. "I am being less demanding about what is and isn't allowed, of _how_ people atone for their sins. Though it is...an adjustment."

"That seems like an understatement," Rook says, he's moved in beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touch.

Joseph looks at him, and there's something that might be a smile, if you were very generous. Rook thinks there's more to that, he wonders if Joseph will share it with him.

"I forgive you for leaving," Joseph says instead. "For feeling like you had to leave." 

"For not being here when you all hit the ground?" Rook asks. Because he's spent a lot of time thinking about that.

Joseph's eyes shut briefly, and Rook thinks that part was really fucking hard. And he feels guilty for that, for leaving Joseph in that.

"My forgiveness is not boundless," Joseph says carefully, which Rook thinks means he will, but not yet. "You should have trusted me. But then trust was never a skill you mastered."

Rook nods. "Yes, I think you told me once, fifty seven times on one page."

Joseph blinks.

"You took the book with you." He realises, all at once.

"You wrote it for me," Rook says. "And I didn't think you'd want it any more."

Joseph looks at him, and this look is a lot more familiar to him, confused and soft, like Joseph has discovered something unexpected about him, and he doesn't know what to do with it. The back of Joseph's hand settles against his own, and it feels weirdly, unexpectedly intimate. Which makes no sense considering all the things that they've done. 

Rook pretends he hasn't noticed, wonders how long Joseph will let the contact go on.

Joseph lifts his other hand, uses it to gesture outside.

"We are going to eat together tonight, all of us. You could join us, if you like," he says that stiffly, awkwardly. Then he frowns, as if he doesn't know how to do this, doesn't know how to politely invite someone to dinner. As if Joseph has never had to worry about it before, and maybe he hasn't, maybe half his life has just been suffering, and sermons, and preparing for the end of the world. 

"I'd like that," Rook says, and he means it. He doesn't know what it's going to be like now, how they're going to be around each other now. He just knows that he hasn't felt right anywhere else. Which is probably his fault somehow - but he's come to realise that all of it mattered, all of it counted, and he's fine with that.

Joseph looks surprised, as if he hadn't accounted for the possibility that Rook might say yes.

"Afterwards, if you wish to stay, there will be a reading," Joseph adds, and then seems to remember all at once how that might sound. "Everyone will remain dressed. It will not be -" he stops and sighs, as if he hadn't quite realised how difficult this was going to be. How weird the amount of intimacy they'd already shared would be. He seems to be trying to think of a good way to tell Rook that he doesn't expect anything. But it's probably a little late for that.

"Are you going to try and convert me to your new religion?" Rook asks, because that seems like the sort of thing he should check.

"Only if you let me." Joseph says that with a strangely pointed amount of seriousness. As if he hopes that Rook will.

The peggies watch them walk out together, and it's clear they're not quite sure what it means. Joseph doesn't stop to bless anyone, no one paws at him or reaches out to be touched. It feels different, and yet in so many ways it feels exactly the same. Rook doesn't have to do Joseph's hair this time though, it's almost offensively tidy.

Joseph drives them this time too, which is a strangely new and entertaining experience. Joseph seems to realise as much as well.

He tells Rook what's been happening to Eden's Gate, or whatever Eden's Gate will become, that still seems to be a question. It lost half its members, either to the Bliss, or the lives they'd had before. But the one's who'd stayed seem fully onboard with wherever Joseph chooses to lead them to next. Rook kind of hopes it's somewhere he doesn't have to arrest him for. 

The Ranch seems smaller without all the trucks parked around it, though the place is still heavily armed, since the town hasn't exactly forgiven or forgotten. There's another familiar face out front, and Faith sees Rook's shadow before she sees him. She hurries over, laughing like she might burst.

" _Adam_!" She tries to grab him and dance around him at the same time.

"You came back. I knew you would, I told you he would, Joseph. It's been forever, where have you been? I missed you, and I have so many things to tell you. Spin me!" Faith lifts her arms, and Rook can't resist cupping her under them and turning in a circle, then another, while she laughs. She's still laughing when he sets her on her feet again.

"No one else is big enough for that," she declares breathlessly against his chest. "Jacob tries, but it's not the same."

"I missed you too," Rook admits. Which makes her happy.

She slips between them, takes one of Joseph's hands and one of Rook's. She makes them walk with her. Joseph surprises Rook by not resisting her excited pulls.

"John said you would come back, and Jacob said you wouldn't. But Jacob is grumpy and contrary, so I didn't listen to him."

Contrary is one word Rook would use for him, and if there's one person in the house who might be unhappy with Rook's presence it's him. Assuming he doesn't have his own deputy-shaped regrets to worry about.

"Are you staying for dinner?" Faith asks. "Joseph is a very good cook."

"I think so, yes," Rook says cautiously. Which makes Faith pull at his hand so she can bump into him and laugh delight.

"John will be so happy. He was so mad when you left, and then when you didn't come back, he wouldn't -"

"Faith," Joseph says quietly, and Rook remembers what he said, about her sharing other people's secrets.

She laughs and pulls them both in, tangles their hands together - a press of warmth and familiarity which Rook feels all the way through him - before Faith is twirling off towards the house.

Rook waits for Joseph to let go.

But he doesn't.

"There are some things you can't fix," Joseph says quietly. Rook's not sure whether it's a warning about what Joseph is, or an apology for what he isn't. But he clearly thinks Rook needs to know, if he's going to be here, if he's going to choose to be here. 

"I know," Rook says, because he finally knows what he wants, and he can be persistent when he wants to be. "I've been trying to fix this since I left, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it by myself." 

Joseph tightens his grip on Rook's hand, pulls him gently towards the house.

Rook goes with him.


End file.
